Documenting Yes
In 2011 the pro-independence Scottish National Party and party of government won their first outright majority in the Scottish parliament. They then embarked on a long held dream of theirs, Scottish Independence. An agreement was made with the UK government in Westminster to hold an independence referendum in September of 2014 and in 2012 the campaign for Scottish Independence started in earnest. The official campaign was known as Yes Scotland but there were many other independent grassroots organisations. I went to the first official march and rally for independence in Edinburgh in September of 2012 to document with my camera what was going on. There I met the co-founders of National Collective, a recently founded artists collective focused on using the arts as a means to communicate the benefits of independence. We talked about the importance of imagery. Out of these conversations a name for my project had come and a wider vision was established. To document as many independence events as possible and make them available to anyone who wanted to use them in the hope that it would help showcase the postive vision and mood surrounding the independce campaign. The project quickly grew legs as I realised I could not document everything by myself. I put a call out for contributions and soon I was managing 10+ regular photographers and publishing daily. Here are a few of my own images from that time.