Touchstones

I carry a small white stone in my camera bag, picked up from one of my favorite beaches. It is a piece of Maine I take with me on my journeys as a photographer. It is a reminder of where I have been and where I will return. It is my touchstone. While photographing in St. Columba’s Chapel it took me a while to recognize the stones resting on the windowsill for what they were. Each was a touchstone brought by a pilgrim to Iona as reminder of home.

Scotland became a metaphor for a search for the spiritual within the physical world. This book is not meant to be a catalogue of humanity’s inventiveness with stone. It is a pilgrimage through a landscape filled with places I found visually exciting. I worked in locations from the far north in Orkney to the Borders in the south, from Iona to St. Andrews, and from Aberdeen to Calanais on Lewis. I traveled untold hundreds of miles and made thousands of images. The ones chosen for this book speak to me. Some may ask more questions than they answer. Some may be a simple observation. I invite you to spend time with these images. Perhaps you will find your own touchstone among these pages.