Ian MacDonald

Shooting Time – Ian Macdonald by Jamie Macdonald

As a lecturer of photography at degree level, Jamie Macdonald wanted to create a series of films that would inform, educate and inspire others. Where better to start than with a film about his own father, internationally renowned photographer, Ian Macdonald?

The Creek

Filmmaker Warren Harrison captures the memories and experiences of people who grew up as part of a unique community at Greatham Creek, a salt-marsh near Hartlepool in the Tees Valley. One of those who’s memories are recorded is photographer Ian Macdonald whose haunting images of the creek are used in the film along with family photographs, archive film provided by the North East Film Archive and contemporary footage.

See the film here

Ian MacDonald – Tees Estuary

From the wonderful Side Gallery Newcastle

The industrialized river mouth documented in the early 1980s by the North Yorkshire photographer, extending his 1970s work in Greatham Creek.

Macdonald wrote: ‘The Tees Estuary is visually extremely exciting. Its richness, in part, arises from the inherent contrasts of the natural environment against man-made structures – of the vast sphere of sky, serene or dramatic, against the horizontal flatness of lowland space punctuated by verticals as power stations, fractionating columns, blast furnaces and estuarine lights. The vast expanse of water reflects a permeating light which clothes objects and landscape in a unique brightness, beautiful and sensational, a delight to photographers and film-makers alike.’ Commissioned by Side Gallery, the exhibition was shown in 1982.

All images © Ian Macdonald

See the online exhibition here 

The Creek

The Creek documentary tells the story of a community of fishermen and their families  who built a series of boat-houses and cabins on the north bank of Greatham Creek at the turn of the 20th century, and was abandoned in the early 1980’s. Through interviews with former residents, the photographer Ian Macdonald (who produced a significant body of work at the creek), archive photographs, and location filming, The Creek presents a deeply engaging, moving, and thought provoking film about the Teesside salt-marsh landscape and a unique community that flourished there for nearly a century.  Ultimately, the film is an affirming  celebration of a way of life in a self-built arcadia.

Details here