Norman McBeath is a photographer, printmaker and member of the Royal Scottish Academy. The National Portrait Galleries in London, Edinburgh and Canberra have over seventy of his portraits in their collections. Portraits held in the National Portrait Gallery, London can be seen here.

Objects have always been a source of fascination and inspiration for me. In Exceptional Subjects I've made a photographic study of items selected from a private collection built up over many years. At its heart is the process of looking - what we look at and what we use to do that.
The artists' book version (shown in the photograph) is published in an A5 size limited edition of 350. This is a forty-eight-page book with twenty-six black and white photographs and a response to the photographs, Delta, Ditto, Darkness, by the writer Melissa McCarthy. Exceptional Subjects has been acquired by permanent collections which include the British Library; Royal Scottish Academy; University of St Andrews Special Collections; University of Edinburgh Special Collections,; The Ballinglen Arts Foundation and The Centre for Print Research, UWE, Bristol.

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CURRENT

FRANCE: University of Lille. The artists' book Exceptional Subjects (Collectors' Edition), a collaboration with Melissa McCarthy, will be exhibited at the international conference Quand la création s'empare de l'édition | When Creation Takes Over Publishing at the University of Lille from 12th - 14th November 2025.

CZECH REPUBLIC: Moravian Museum, Brno. Photographs from the Barbara Day collection of Czech President Václav Havel’s visit to Oxford University in 1998. The exhibition is called Sparks of Freedom: British Support of Brno Dissent Groups in the 1980s, organised by the Moravian Museum's Department of the History of Anti-Totalitarian Culture, 15th October 2025 - 19th April 2026.

RECENT

DALKEITH PALACE: Perdendosi, a collaboration with Edmund de Waal, as part of PHOTO Dalkeith 2025, 30th August - 5th October 2025

KIRKUDBRIGHT: Kirkudbright Galleries, Dumfries and Galloway. Scottish Landscape Awards. 5th July - 28th September 2025

AUSTRALIA: Home of the Arts, Gold Coast. Portrait of the poet Linton Kwesi Johnson on loan from the National Portrait Gallery, London. 'Writers Revealed', "Treasures from the British Library and National Portrait Gallery, London" 12th April - 3rd August 2025

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