This article is more than 7 months oldSet within the grandeur of Dalkeith Palace and its grounds, 17 leading photographers create work that responds to nature – including beaming family members’ faces on to trees!Meditative … an image from Margaret Mitchell’s A Gentle Awareness. Photograph: Margaret MitchellThu 18 Sep 2025 08.00 CESTReserved, David EustaceA new exhibition brings together work from 17 leading photographers, set within the grandeur of Dalkeith Palace. It invites visitors to reflect on the enduring relationship between people, place and the natural world. Photographer and film-maker David Eustace will debut his first live performance work, Reserved, in which he directs six strangers in a seated, nude performance. PhotoDalkeith 2025: Nature and Nurture | Contemporary Scottish Photography Exhibition is at Dalkeith Palace, Scotland until 5 October 2025 (weekly, Fridays to Sundays) The People of Jura, Margaret MitchellWhere does life gather, what holds it there? Margaret Mitchell’s A Gentle Awareness is a meditation on how we are shaped by what and where we belong to, how the spaces we inhabit become a part of us, as much as we are part of them. This image is drawn from a wider body of work that spans various locations and lives across Scotland – from inner-city streets to small towns, from island views to urban edgesPerdendosi IX, Norman McBeathNorman McBeath explores the relationship between environment and the individual in this collaboration with Edmund de Waal. The black and white studies of single leaves evoke fragility, transience and the consolation of natureUnique Cyanotype 1mx2.5m, Alexander HamiltonAlexander Hamilton and Constanza Dessain engage in a creative dialogue around the cyanotype processUntitled 2024, Constanza DessainCyanotype is one of photography’s earliest, camera-less formsThe Buccleuch Collection, Walter DalkeithAmong the highlights are a rare selection of never-before-seen photographs from the Buccleuch family albums, reinterpreted by Walter, Earl of Dalkeith. These images connect the family’s deep-rooted history with the natural beauty and heritage of the estateUntitled, Alexander LindsayAlexander Lindsay has been creating monumental landscape photographs of extraordinary detail and clarity for the last 12 years. Before this, Lindsay filmed, directed and produced television documentaries, covered the Afghan occupation by Soviet forces over a five-year period, and both the Gulf and the Iraq wars. He also directed and produced the photography and filming operations for two expeditions to the wreck of the Titanic, during which he descended into the interior of the legendary shipwreckDavid WilliamsDavid Williams’s images of his immediate family are testament to his ongoing love-affair with taking photographs of those closest to himRhinoceros AD 2025 (2024), Calum ColvinCalum Colvin is showing a new work specially made for PhotoDalkeith 2025. This central panel considers how image and imagination can become substitutes for experience Ian Hamilton Finlay with bust of JJ Rousseau, Robin GillandersRobin Gillanders recreates his acclaimed exhibition The Philosopher’s Garden, a meditation on the origins of the public park. Inspired by the garden created in France by the Marquis de Girardin for philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Gillanders’ exquisite black and white photographs bring together this French garden and Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Little Sparta in ScotlandDigging for Diamonds, Alicia BruceDigging for Diamonds captures photographic portraits of people, produce and place in the unique rural setting of AberdeenshireMemory Tree, Jennifer Gough-CooperJennifer Gough-Cooper captures the enduring presence of a single tree – an emblem of continuity and renewal in her lifeHerman on Hornbeam, Andy WienerAndy Wiener projects portraits of his family and ancestors on to living trees, creating vivid, original works that highlight the interdependence of humankind and the natural worldUntitled, Graham FagenThese elegiac and hauntingly beautiful seascapes invite meditation on the way in which human activity colours our apprehension of the natural world Mine, Jane BrettleThese landscapes of former mining areas consider the notions of belonging, continuity and transformationUntitled, Iain StewartIain Stewart revisits places of ancestral significance around the Solway Firth, where religious conflict in the 17th century left its mark. His work evokes a haunting beauty and the inseparable link between human history and natureThe Blind Leading the Blind, Ron O’DonnellRon O’Donnell responds to the grandeur of Dalkeith Palace – once home to old master paintings – by reinterpreting Breughel’s works with a satirical eye on contemporary Scotland