I am a Scottish photographer and artist working on concepts related to the self, memory, death and grief. Attempting to understand these things and to present coherent and worthwhile ideas as two dimensional photographs. As I explore these themes, this in turn unpeels layers within myself.

©2016, Richard Dalgleish All Rights Reserved

How do we think of the self through the visual image? Is that really me? When I look in a mirror, the image I see is not standalone but comes with all of my thoughts and experiences and inhibitions and preferences. If I look at the same photograph in a day or a week or a year or ten, how does what has happened to me since that day impact my view of myself and how does that relate to the self shown in this photograph?

Is this photograph really me? Can a photograph ever capture the self? Why photography? What is the context? What am I thinking? What am I about to do? What have I just done?

That photograph is from 2016 and the year before I lost my mother to Alzheimer’s and my daughter to cancer. Even for me, it is difficult to resolve the self as seen through the photograph with what I remember was inside me back then and what is inside me today.

Richard Dalgleish, Feb 2022