Photographic Credits

Robert Heddle Robertson

Robert Heddle Robertson was born at Grutha, South Ronaldsay in 1972 and moved to Stromness in the late 1890s. Stromness was a bustling port at that time due to the herring fishing industry and Robert opened two Grocery shops, one in Alfred Street and the other in Victoria Street.

His photography was carried out mostly as an enthuisiastic amateur though he did sell postcards and photographic equipment in his shops. He lived and worked in Stromness for fourteen years, continuing to photograph events around Stromness and the West Mainland. However, in that time the herring industry had gradually declined and eventually Robert and his family left Stromness, taking up an appointment as manager of the Co-operative store in Pierowall, on the island of Westray. He continued to take photographs after moving to Westray and the island is fortunate to have such an excellent photographic record of the life and people of that time.

R.H. Robertson continued to take photographs for many years, living to the grand old age of ninety. He died in 1962. The Photographic Archive has over 2500 of his original glass plate negatives in it's collection.

William Hourston

William Hourston was born in Evie in 1895. He moved to Stromness in the 1930s and originally ran a Billiard Saloon and Barber shop, but his true interest was photography.

The raising of the scuttled ships of the German High Seas Fleet in Scapa Flow gave him an opportunity to exploit his photographic skills and he produced many memorable images of the work over the years.

William had a good eye for the picturesque and took many photographs of Stromness and further afield, producing calendars and postcards of his work. He had trained as a joiner and was able to make a lot of his own darkroom equipment.

William Hourston was, for a time, an occasional Lighthouse Keeper on Suleskerry, an isolated rocky outpost about thirty miles west of Orkney. Of course, he took along his camera and recorded the huge numbers of sea birds and seals that frequented the area. W.H. Hourston served in both World Wars, receiving injusries in the 1st World War that affected him all his life. He continued to live in Stromness, taking photographs late into the 1950s. He remained in the town until his death in 1968.

Tom Kent

Tom Kent is probably Orkney's most famous photographer. He was born in the Parish of Firth in 1863, but it was after emigrating to America and working in a Chicago Drugstore that he learned the skills that allowed him to set up shop on his return to Orkney.

More than just a recorder of events he had an eye for composition as well as a seemingly unerring ability to be in the right place at the right time. He used the most sophisticated equipment available at the time, but that would still mean having to carry around a large heavy wooden camera and a quantity of glass plates, no mean feat in itself.

The quality of Tom Kent's photographs was recognised outside Orkney and he contributed regularly to professional magazines as well as pictorial magazines such as Country Life.

Sadly Tom seems to have fallen on hard times in later life and when he died, on 11th August 1936, his passing went almost unnoticed, a sad end for a man who had played such an important part in documenting life in Orkney.

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