The Gerry McCann Archive

I’m delighted to be able to write that the photographic archive of Scottish photojournalist Gerry McCann has been acquired by the University of Edinburgh for their growing photographic collection.

It gives me pleasure and pride to have had a role in making sure Gerry’s valuable archive of photography was acquired and that future generations of students will be able to research and utilise his photographic work via the University collections.

The acquisition of Gerry’s work came about as part of the photographic archive services I now offer. In 2022/2023 I tracked down Gerry’s photography archive work, and found it not in Scotland where I somehow imagined it would be, but in Germany being looked after by extended family. With the permission of his estate I worked with their generous assistance to put together a proposal for acquisition of the photographic archive to the University of Edinburgh, and then over the ensuing year and a half I successfully represented the family through the process, culminating in the archive being safely transferred from Germany, via Glasgow, to its new safe and secure home in the library collections archives of the University of Edinburgh.

Now it will be rehoused, catalogued, and made available for study and research. That gives his family, and me as his friend and colleague, immense pride to know that Gerry’s work will receive such recognition and that his years of hard work as a freelance photojournalist have been recognised, that Gerry’s legacy will continue to live and grow, and his photography of Scotland and of the causes he cared deeply about will be utilised by future generations.

“I was holding off sending our family thanks until handover of the archive! We are very grateful to you firstly for thinking about it and your tenacity in following through with it all. It's been a long process and I appreciate you'd been in contact […] for some time before hand. It's amazing to think Gerard's work has such cultural importance and significance to Scotland in particular - it would have meant the world to him and I'm only saddened he didn't realise it in his lifetime. Once again our sincere thanks and gratitude.”

- J. McCann, executor of the Estate of Gerry McCann, photojournalist.

Photojournalist Gerry McCann (on right), with his good friend and colleague David Mitchell (on left), at a ‘No War in Gulf’ demonstration, in George Square, in Glasgow, Scotland, 2nd February 1991. Photograph by ©Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert.

Back in the 1990’s I knew Gerry McCann, I would see him photographing at trade union demonstrations on the streets of our home city of Glasgow. I’d see him on strike days and at the locations of the news events of the times. 

I knew Gerry was serious about his photography, and had travelled widely. We’d share anecdotes and stories of our time in Romania, and he tell me of his journeys to Ethiopia, Nepal and beyond. We were colleagues, we occasionally had a beer together to discuss our love of documentary photography and of our careers, and I was incredulous and jealous in equal measure at the knowledge that he’d been given almost unfettered access to photograph inside Glasgow’s notorious HMP Barlinnie prison. 

In 2003 I moved to Japan for a decade and we lost touch, and then Gerry moved north to Inverness. In 2018 he cruelly lost his life to cancer at a young age, and his photographic work sat ever since in boxes in Germany, looked after by his extended family.

Gerry cared about people, he cared about children getting a good education and the opportunities that education would bring and it would give him great delight to know his archive has now been acquired by the University of Edinburgh photography collection, where his work will now be safely looked after, catalogued and go on to inform, educate and entertain. You can read more about Gerry, and the acquisition of his archive of 40-years of photography in this latest pdf Re:Connect Annual Report 2025 from the University of Edinburgh Library.

Some of Gerry McCann’s photographic archive, held in storage boxes, leaves temporary storage to its new, safe and secure home in the University of Edinburgh, where it would be rehoused and safely protected, 2025. ©Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert.

The first stage. Gerry McCann’s archive (in brown boxes, centre & right of image) was immediately rehoused into archival storage boxes, on its arrival in the library collection’s archives of the University of Edinburgh earlier this year. From here it will go on to be catalogued, sorted, and securely looked after, and made available for research. Image courtesy of Daryl Green/University of Edinburgh.