Photo Credit: Paul Watt
Curated in part by British documentary maker Steve McQueen, Resistance is an archival project that tracks the UK’s protest movements from the early 20th century to the beginning of the new millennium. From the mass trespass that led to the creation of our national parks to the fight for women’s suffrage, National Galleries of Scotland’s latest exhibition documents protest’s presence in British society.
Beginning with some of the earliest protest photography, taken by suffragettes Norah Smyth and Christina Broom, Resistance presents early movements as blueprints for those that followed. Continuity between different events is pushed to the foreground, with Chris Miles’ images of Notting Hill Carnival neatly joining those of the 1990s rave scene, illustrating how music and performance can drive resistance to unfair policing.
Not only does Resistance highlight recurring methods of protest, but it also emphasises continuity through its visual language, with each photograph being standardised by size and colour. Co-curator Clarrie Wallis outlines how some pictures, whilst originally shot in colour, have been converted to black and white to match earlier monochrome images.
Resistance sets out to define a distinct period in photojournalism, ending its timeline in the early 2000s with photographs of protests against the UK’s role in the Iraq War. Wallis says the decision to stop the exhibit here was driven by the advent of smartphones and the subsequent accessibility of digital photography. With anyone being able to capture an event and publish it within seconds, our current media landscape no longer values images in the way that Resistance presents them.
Resistance marks an end of an era in photojournalism through its documentation of Britain’s colourful protest past, presenting it in all of its monochromatic glory.
Resistance will run until Jan 4th 2026 at National Galleries of Scotland Modern Two, Edinburgh. https://www.nationalgalleries.org/tickets/74421
