Book Review: Alex Boyd, St Kilda, The Silent Islands
Stac an Armin and Boreray Alex Boyd endures a complex relationship with Romanticism. His past projects have poked tongue in cheek fun at lone figures in sublime Scottish landscapes whilst, on the other hand, pursuing a series of arduous alternative process chemical adventures in suitably remote locations in Scotland and Ireland. In his newly published book St Kilda, The Silent Islands Boyd finds middle ground where the inescapable natural beauty of the islands and the archetypal abandoned settlement at Village Bay on Hirta are balanced by a healthy injection of contemporary reality through inclusion of photographs of the long running and still active military presence on the islands. Village Bay from Ruabhal Not to kill the romance completely, we are told before we reach the photographs that many of them were made using a camera previously owned by renowned landscape photographer Fay Godwin. The connection is clear enough to see through the photographs thems...