Desire Lines : A Year of Celtic Saints

Using descriptions from stories about early Scottish and Celtic saints, photographer Thomas Joshua Cooper and Catherine Mooney made pilgrimages to the birth sites, death sites and places of significance to the early Scottish Christian pioneers. The beautiful, often ethereal, photographs they made once they’d arrived in these places are reproduced in a format reminiscent of a Calendar of Saints, in which saints’ days were honoured – here illuminated by 79 of Thomas’ arresting black and white images. Locations depicted include Lothian, Scotland and Donegal, Ireland, mimicking journeys made first by St Enoch, her son St Mungo and his contemporary St Columba, among others, such as sites relating to St Ninian, St Constantine, St Serf, St Mirren and St Kessog; the latter was evangelised in Loch Lomond, Lennox and Perthshire and a number of views relate to his journey.

The stories of these early Celtic saints are fascinating and the corresponding landscape views by Cooper are transportive in evoking an earlier age, where the trappings of modern society are largely absent, and one can very easily imagine the paths, routes and journeys – or ‘desire lines’ – taken by these inspiring people.