South Uist's Teenage Fishing Professionals

Off the coast of South Uist, Emma and John take their boats out before light to work the creels. Nineteen and seventeen, sister and brother, they already carry the trade with the ease of people who have known nothing else — hauling, baiting, reading the water, in conditions that give nothing away for free.

I had come to the Hebrides for another project, retracing the islands through Paul Strand's Tir A'Mhurain. Meeting Emma and John changed the course of my stay. Where Strand's South Uist was a community on the edge of transformation, theirs is one that endures — not preserved, but lived, by a generation choosing to stay and work the same waters.

I spent a full day at sea with them and their uncle Peter: seven hours, one boat, the constant rocking, a medium-format camera and its narrow plane of focus. The repetition of the work — creel up, empty, re-bait, creel down — became the rhythm I photographed against, learning to anticipate the moment inside the labour rather than waiting for it.

This is not a portrait of hardship. It is a record of competence, of two young people who are masters of their trade, and of a way of life on the islands that continues against the odds.

Exhibited at the MeCCSA Exhibition, Edinburgh Napier University, September 2025.