George M Cowie St Andrews Photojournalism Collection

Object type Photograph Record level Collection

Details

Title
George M Cowie St Andrews Photojournalism Collection
Descriptive titles
  • Cowie Collection
Description
George Middlemass Cowie (1902-1982) worked as a freelance press photographer from the 1930s until 1982. His work covers all aspects of life in and around St Andrews and the East Neuk of Fife, and includes an outstanding collection of golfing photographs. In his early years in St Andrews Cowie was photographer in the area to most of the national dailies working closely with the local syndicate of reporters, particularly Alexander Brown Paterson. After the war the national papers built up their own staff of itinerant press photographers and this outlet for George's work became less important, although at the same time the local press began to make greater use of his talents.

Beatrice Cowie acted as darkroom technician, handling the processing and printing of the outdoor images George captured. William Fraser was employed as a photographer from 1951 to 1960 and Andrew Cowie was involved in the photography business before his untimely death from leukemia in 1980. Andrew Cowie's photographs of St Andrews are held within the George Cowie Collection.

ARRANGEMENT: Cowie created a numbered sequence with an alphabetical index for some negatives taken in 1935-38. However his main arrangement for his negatives was by broad subject groupings which have been retained. In addition there is a series of negatives covering productions at the Byre Theatre, Abbey Street, St Andrews.

The main series of negatives cover the following subjects, golf negatives accounting for about a quarter of the total: Golf personalities; Royalty; Military and RAF; Open Golf Championship; Walker Cup Golf; Eden Golf Tournament; Golf Course Views; Miscellaneous Golf; Royal and Ancient Golf Club; Ceres Games; Highland Dancing; St Andrews Views; University; Fife Views; Commercial; Lammas; Glenrothes; British Sugar Corporation; Fife Fox Hounds; Churches and Ministers; Miscellaneous; Farming.
Collection
Photographic Collections
Parent record
St Andrews and Fife Collections Parent record level Collection
Hierarchy
View hierarchy
Created by
Date
ca. null - 1982
Extent
  • 60000
Department
Special Collections - Photographic Collections
Record level
Collection
Related resources
Format
Media
Subjects
Acknowledgement
© The University of St Andrews
Conditions
CC BY-NC Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Public License
Credit line
Courtesy of the University of St Andrews Libraries and Museums

Location

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