I had never heard of Erraid before today. It is a peninsula in a remote corner of Scotland, cut off from the mainland when the tide rises and becoming an island, sitting near the Isle of Mull. It is the kind of place the rest of the world seems to have agreed to leave alone. Battered by the sea and winds, stripped back to essentials, quietly enduring. A small number of people live there. Tough, self-reliant, deeply rooted in the land. They are called “members” of the community, a word that carries its own history. The island was once the private possession of the Duke of Argyll before it was eventually sold and became part of a foundation of which the inhabitants are members. Ownership changed, but the place itself seems largely indifferent to all of it. Monica Stuurop was part of a group of Dutch artists who felt this forgotten corner of Scotland needed to be given a closer look. They came and paid attention. A film was made following a shepherd through his days on the land, the slow rhythms of that life recorded with love. Photographs were taken too. It is those photographs that stopped me. They carry for me a particular feeling, that of coming across a life that the rest of the world has forgotten. Artefacts left where they were last used. Drying laundry lifted by the wind. Rooms and spaces that look as though no one has thought to change them in decades, not out of neglect, but simply because there was no reason to. Some places hold time differently. Erraid is unafraid and seems to be one of them and Monica Stuurop was able to capture this with great sensitivity.
