hallaig-2

"Time, the deer, is in Hallaig Wood

There's a board nailed across the window
I looked through to see the west..."

Hallaig is a village on the island of Raasay, which was forcibly evicted during the Highland Clearances in 1854. Clearances info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances

This close-up of the wall of an abandoned house is part of a small series of images that I am currently printing as polymer photogravures. The images are based around a poem by Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean, whose own forebears were evicted. Here is a freewheeling translation by Nobel Prize winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/nov/30/featuresreviews.guardianreview35