New work from Torridon, Wester Ross, Scottish Highlands.

These images were made on two trips: my November workshop with a fantastic group of people, and on a private trip back in January to try to see if I could dig further below the surface.

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I’ve had a long history with Torridon. Being one of three places I would visit as an amateur photographer back in the years 2000 to 2003, I had always felt there is something below the surface, something not so obvious, but it is there. This landscape does not offer up ‘postcard vistas’. It is a hard landscape to grasp, and I have often struggled here.

As my photography developed over the years, I strayed away from the Scottish Highlands. I had found simplicity elsewhere in Bolivia, Iceland and Hokkaido. It is with the current restrictions on our lives, that I have had the chance to reacquaint myself with my homeland. The work is different from what I once captured here. I see traces of Hokkaido’s space and Iceland’s tonality. I don’t think it’s a progression of sorts at all: more like ‘This is Bruce doing Scotland in his ‘Bruce Way’. I suppose.

I’m enjoying the return to my roots. I can’t say for sure that I feel I’m moving forward, as my instinct was to keep photographing abroad, but as with all things in life : it’s a surprise to be back here photographing my home land, and I think I am seeing things with a better eye in some ways than I did when I was just an amateur spending his spare weekends roaming Torridon in his car.