Branches I                          
2007
Photogravure                                        

Norman McBeath                         
Residence: Edinburgh, Scotland
Birthplace: Scotland

My work focuses on people and places. Sometimes they feature together as in a portrait set within a particular context, or I may look more at the evidence of peoples’ presence rather than their appearance in front of the camera. Examples of this include two miniature prints submitted to The Americas Biennial Exhibition & Archive, which are digital prints of marks left in the wake of printmaking—the scratches, smears, and stains that are made as a byproduct of the creative process.

As a printmaker I work exclusively with photogravures. The original artwork is a photograph that I take with either a medium or large format camera, and black & white film. I maintain strict control over each stage of the process by processing the film, making the plate, and finally printing the print on the etching press.

Norman McBeath is a printmaker and independent photographer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is a member of the Edinburgh Printmakers and has had his prints shown in the Royal Scottish Academy as well as in shows in Canada, Denmark, Finland, Japan, and the United States.

The National Print Galleries in London and Edinburgh hold fifty of his portraits in their permanent collections. His latest solo exhibition of prints—‘Evidence’—was at Edinburgh Printmakers in 2006 as part of the ‘Featured Artist’ Series and included an introduction by the writer A.L. Kennedy. Earlier that year he also had a solo exhibition at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum—‘Oxford at Night’, black & white night photographs at Oxford—with an introduction by the writer Jeannette Winterson. This was the first exhibition by a living photographer in the museum’s history.

He is currently working on a series of photogravures and photographs, part of a joint exhibition—‘Confluence’—which begins touring Scotland in 2008.