Scottish photographer Kirsty Mackay endeavors to show those who are not seen, whom politics, the press and the economy neglect. Selected by the Virginia Prize jury in 2022, Mackay’s work has captured the minds with its documentary strength, but also with its poetic and deeply human aura. If she takes up certain codes of social photography, this reporter from Glasgow flees denigrating and voyeuristic representations of human misery, by approaching poverty as a complex fact, dependent on the cultural fabric in which it is inserted. Faced with his lens, the “invisible” conquer a right to speak and, with frankness, expose their reality.
To build Testimonies on Mental Health, the photographer went to meet people with mental disabilities. The result is a series recounting their daily lives and their challenges, as well as the invisibility and discrimination of which they are victims. In Scotland’s Drugs Deaths Crisis, the author this time documents the epidemic of deaths caused by heavy drug use in Scotland in 2021 – a tragic consequence of the growing impoverishment of the country. Through My Favourite Colour Was Yellowit also addresses the issue of gender inequality and the social injunctions that mark the lives of women. The Fish That Never Swam – series selected for the Virginia Prize – marks the culmination of this long journey of committed photography: Kirsty Mackay conducts an investigation into the social, political, economic and structural forces that influence our life expectancy – more particularly, that of her fellow citizens of Glasgow, suffering the violence of unjust government policies. A reporter’s job without concessions.
The deadly consequences of harmful policies
In Glasgow, the life expectancy of the inhabitants seems shortened: it is seven years lower than the British average for men, and four years for women. In the suburb of Possil she even reached the age of 66. As for the suicide rate? It is 30% higher in the capital. In the Penilee district, for example, three young people killed themselves in the space of a week in June 2020. This phenomenon is not limited to disadvantaged areas – citizens of all social classes see their hope health reduced by 15%. For four years, Kirsty Mackay conducted the investigation to try to make sense of this precariousness. The Fish That Never Swam, self-published book, is the result of many meetings with his fellow citizens. From their testimonies, an observation emerges: that of state mistreatment and the deadly consequences of harmful public policies. These have managed to create an environment where segregation, alienation, mass unemployment, the generational trauma that has followed, poverty and deprivation are now a public health problem.
Kirsty Mackay personally bore the brunt of this excess mortality, with the early deaths of her father and three of her friends. By creating connections between recent studies and her own experience, the photographer conducts an in-depth study of inequalities in health. “It is in the bodies of young people in Glasgow that Mackay looks for traces of the policies (and politicians) implemented decades before they were born. The white body of a toddler in the arms of its mother, a young girl or a teenager in a black hoodie, nothing distinguishes them, and yet they are subjected, like Mackay, to a form of social predestination shaped in boardrooms and think tanks, but inscribed in us in our bones and in the cells that built them, and which in turn build our children,” concludes Katherine Parhar, writer, curator and educator.
The Fish That Never Swam, self-published, £45, 288 p.
© Kirsty Mackay
