Edinburgh: An Architectural Portrait

Edinburgh: An Architectural Portraitfeaturesan inspiring portfolio of imagery created over a ten-year period by thephotographer and visual artist James Reid. Documenting the City of Edinburghusing digital, analogue and polaroid formats, the book captures the city’s mainconservation areas, with an emphasis on key architects, listed buildings anddistinct aspects of the cityscape.

Presented as a beautiful collection ofblack-and-white images, along with a handful of colour works, the book’sdigital images are a mixture of full-frame capture and large-scale compositepieces, along with a selection of 35mm analogue single-frame photography. Theseinclude panoramic views as well as more intimate perspectives, made possible byReid’s unique access to the city’s various buildings and structures of note.

The book also features essays by fiveestablished Edinburgh-based artists Aly Gordon (painter), Bruce Hare(artist and architect), Marianne Magnin (artist and curator), Merlin Ramos(painter) and Henry Stevens (artist and architect) each ofwhom offers a personally informed response to the city and how itsarchitecture, art and history inform, influence and impact on them.

The resulting publication is a uniquevisual mapping of the city’s most architecturally significant areas that willappeal to not only architects, artists and academics, but also residence of andvisitors to one of the world’s most architecturally rich capitals of culture.

Author Biography

James Reid is an Edinburgh-based visual artist who has established his own distinct style using a range of photographic media (digital, analogue and polaroid), along with printing, drawing and airbrush techniques, to produce traditional and experimental works around the world. Reid received his MA in Fine Art Photography from De Montfort University in Leicester. Hisart practice is founded on the natural and built environment, and has evolved to include the capturing of large-scale architecture and structures, both during construction and upon completion. Recent projects include the book70 St Mary Axe(Artifice Press, 2020), which features Reid’s detailed visual record of the major central London development of the same name, from concept through to completion.