After Strand: Tir a'Mhurain

Tir a' Mhurain (pages 144/145)

Strand chose a wonderful image to close the book, which also appears on the cover. He named both book and image Tir a' Mhurain (‘land of bent grasses’ in gaelic) and gave no further clues to location.

(I successfully located this image on my return to the islands in 2017, and the details are here: http://www.microcontrast.com/finding-strand/2017/6/18/finding-strand-the-location-of-tir-a-mhurain

Tit a'Mhurain: Paul Strand 1962

Tit a'Mhurain: Paul Strand 1962

The twin hills in the distance look as though they should be identifiable, helped by the scattered buildings, but I did not have time to do so on this trip. It remains on the bucket list (please do drop me a line if you know where it could have been taken).

This captures much of the spirit of the Uists and Benbecula for me as I'm sure it did for him, so lack of a named location is I am sure deliberate - note the beautifully reflected wild horses, rocky, serrated shoreline, the main dark croft and another of his porridgy, clouded skies.

I offer this as a poor, temporary substitute.

Loch Druidibeag: Mark Farrington 2016

Shot in fierce mid-afternoon sunshine along the B890 on the glorious north shore of Loch Druidibeag (somewhere near grid reference 785386), on my way to find the Loch Skioport image from page 36 I saw the grazing ponies and scrambled after them. For some reason I had a lot of trouble getting a decent monochrome conversion of the raw files either directly or via HDR eFex, so this remains simply in colour.

 

Paul Strand and Tir a'Mhurain: new edition of the book

Finding Strand: Cattle sale, Loch Ollay