Lee McCormack on revisiting her old photographs: ‘It brings up a lot of memories’
The legacy of two female photographers who captured community life in the city during the 80s and 90s is being celebrated by Edinburgh Art Festival. Neil Cooper finds out how Sandra George and Lee McCormack’s archives were rediscovered and why the stories their pictures tell still resonate today
The day Edinburgh photographer Sandra George’s vast archive landed on the doorstep of the then recently established Craigmillar Now organisation changed things for everyone who was there. Craigmillar Now opened in 2020 and had just set up a weekly archiving initiative, with an eye on the neighbourhood’s past in the form of Craigmillar Festival Society, the globally recognised community arts organisation. A chance encounter with George’s former partner Jimmy Hewitt led to her archive being rescued from a garden shed where it had sat since her death in 2013 and put into Craigmillar Now’s care. As thousands of negatives were digitised, a vital portrait of Edinburgh life in the 1980s and 90s seen from the frontline of George’s lens was revealed.
Also there that day was Lee McCormack, another photographer tending to her own neglected archive after working in the city around the same time. Where George worked on community newspapers, McCormack’s work charted community projects in Pilton and Craigmillar, including work with long-lost organisations such as Craigmillar Festival Society, Womenzone and the Magic Lantern Van initiative.
‘What a day!’ Craigmillar Now director Rachael Cloughton reflects. ‘The series of coincidences were amazing. It was the very first archive group at Craigmillar Now and I’ve got a photo of Lee and Jimmy together. Talk about serendipity.’ Six years on, the result of what happened that day is two major exhibitions by George and McCormack. While Lee McCormack: A Magic Lantern will run at Craigmillar Now, Sandra George: Start From The Level will see more than 200 of her works occupy the City Art Centre. This follows several smaller exhibitions by George that began when Craigmillar Now programmed a show at The White House Community Café in Craigmillar. Most recently, her work appeared at the 2024 edition of Glasgow International.
As well as the pair’s Art Festival exhibitions, there will also be an event hosted by Wester Hailes-based Community Wellbeing Collective, a kindred spirit of Craigmillar Now and champion of the sort of local culture that George and McCormack’s work was rooted in. This will be led by Craigmillar Now’s head archivist, Anna Mayhew. Craigmillar Now will also stage Level Up: Block Party, a social gathering with music, food and dancing to celebrate George’s legacy. Seen together, the work by George and McCormack captures a time and place in 1980s and 90s Edinburgh. This was an era when it was still possible for those from working class backgrounds to make art through photography, aided by a civic and political will that recognised the significance of such ground-level activity.
For McCormack, revisiting her work has become a fascinating experience. ‘It brings up a lot of memories,’ she says. ‘You would always like to try and take a good picture of all your pals and stuff. But you could hide behind a camera as well. If you were on your own or with a group, as soon as you put the camera up, people would come and speak to you. It was like a solitary thing but communal as well.’
According to Cloughton, McCormack doesn’t recognise her own extraordinary talent as a photographer. ‘It’s such an important collection that Lee has created over decades alongside all her work with community organisations. She’s not somebody that craves the limelight, but I think everything that’s happened with Sandra, and seeing the communities that appreciate seeing that work so much, has maybe changed her perspective.’
As far as George’s work is concerned, for City Art Centre curator Stuart Fallon, she has left behind a vital collection. ‘Her work is remarkable at every level,’ he says. ‘First and foremost I want to foreground her as a brilliant photographer.’ As a way of getting art out beyond the gallery, City Art Centre and Edinburgh Art Festival have teamed up with poster-based organisation Jack Arts to show George’s work on a series of billboards around Edinburgh, putting her work on the streets from where it came. As with McCormack, George’s work is rooted in personal observations of life around her.
‘Sandra had such a vast network,’ Cloughton observes. ‘She did so much work with so many people and so many communities. Even when we’ve had small shows, people have come forward and said they knew her or donated things or brought their own collections. Something on this scale is bound to bring more people forward who have a connection with her. We’ve always tried to integrate local knowledge and lived experience into the archive. I think that will be the case with Lee’s exhibition as well.’
There is plenty more to come. ‘We’re only two thirds of the way through digitising Sandra’s work,’ says Cloughton. ‘It still feels like we’re building this archive and I’d love to be able to track more of the impact that she had, collect those stories and for that to enrich the collection that we’ve got. I think that was so integral to who Sandra was and what she did. It’s about the people she worked with and the lives that she changed.’
Sandra George: Start From The Level, City Art Centre, until 27 September; Lee McCormack: A Magic Lantern, Craigmillar Now, 6–20 August; Common Thread: Sandra George, Wester Hailes + Community Action, Community Wellbeing Space, 15 August; Level Up: Block Party, Craigmillar Now, 21 August.