Dr Patricia Macdonald BSc PhD FRSE FSA(Scot) FRSA HonFRSGS HonFICS
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Patricia Macdonald
Patricia Macdonald is a researcher and academic in environmental history, perception and iconography, with a background in both biology and visual art (Honorary Fellow and a course organiser in Cultural Landscape Studies, Edinburgh University), and an artist-photographer, whose boundary-crossing aerial imagery is exhibited, published, and held in public and private collections internationally.
She is the CEO/Director, and partner with Angus Macdonald, in the Aerographica consultancy and archive, which has specialised, for over 30 years, in environmental research, record and interpretation, principally by means of aerial photography, and in environment-related art projects; her environmental interests lie towards the wilder, ‘semi-natural’ and ‘cryptic’ end of the spectrum of cultural landscapes. She is also responsible for the photographic and art-based aspects of Aerographica’s practice.
Patricia also has considerable experience both as a staff member (Assistant Keeper, project team leader and founding Head of the Publications Office, Royal Scottish Museum/National Museums of Scotland) and at Board/Director level (Main Board, Scottish Natural Heritage (now NatureScot); John Muir Trust; Stills Gallery; Scottish Society for the History of Photography/Studies in Photography; President of the Association for the Protection of Rural Scotland) in the museum/gallery and natural heritage sectors.
She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society.
Patricia Macdonald has authored or co-authored ten books, including Surveying the Anthropocene: Environment and photography now (2021/22, Studies in Photography/Edinburgh University Press – winner of the Saltire Research Book of the Year 2022); Shadow of Heaven (1989, Aurum/Rizzoli)); Once in Europa (1999; with John Berger, Bloomsbury); Airworks (2001, Talbot Rice Gallery/BCA Gallery); and The Hebrides: An aerial view of a cultural landscape (2010, with Angus Macdonald, Birlinn), and has contributed to numerous publications and conference proceedings.
Recent artwork commissions and major exhibitions include the recently built Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Glasgow (2014: ‘Drawing the natural world into the hospital’), and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta/National Galleries of Scotland (2011-14: ‘Bunkered terrain: Golf landscapes’, part of her ongoing project, The play grounds, on the ecological effects of leisure landscapes).
Recent major publications featuring her artworks include Scottish Art in 100 Works (Allerston, Ed., 2023, National Galleries of Scotland); Scottish Art (Macdonald, 2021, Thames & Hudson); The Oxford Companion to the Photograph (Lenman, Ed., 2005/6) and Thames & Hudson’s important international survey Landmark: The fields of landscape photography (Ewing, 2014).