The McMurray Photographic Archive
On the 14th & 15th June I’ve been invited to shoot wet plates at Gatehouse of Fleet as part of the celebrations of the McMurray Photographic Archive exhibition.
On the Friday there will be a lecture and display of the archive at the community centre.
On Saturday I will be taking plates of some of the McMurray descendants and demonstrating the wet plate process. Hopefully the weather will be good so we can stay outdoors.
On the Sunday I’ll be offering tintype and ambrotype portraits.
If your in the area please stop by and say hello.
“In the early years of the 20th Century, William McMurray, a postman in Gatehouse, took a large number of photographs of people and places around Gatehouse. They were kept on glass photographic plates. When his daughter died in 2012, these plates were amongst the possessions that were found in her house. There were about 730 plates and these are now kept in the Stewartry Museum in Kirkcudbright. During the latter part of 2013 Ken Smyth, of the Gatehouse Development Initiative, photographed many of these plates such that they are now available in digital format.”
Link to the McMurray Photographic Archive
Although McMurray was a dry plate photographer, we believe, for this event, wet plate photography maintains the ideals of early photography and the hobbyist photographer.