Graduation address by Professor Sally Mapstone
Wednesday 1 December 2021
Afternoon ceremony
Every picture
As Principal, it now falls to me to deliver today’s graduation address, and let me begin with wholehearted congratulations to you, our new graduates. You have done it. The degrees you have just collected, whether earned over one year or across several more, represent countless hours of concentrated thought and work. And whilst studying is always a challenging and sometimes solitary pursuit that tests your grit and determination to excel, you have been challenged more than most. The pandemic has meant that all of you have, at times, had limited access to in-person resources like libraries and classrooms – even to St Andrews itself – and some of you have studied at all hours, via laptops balanced atop kitchen counters and stacks of books, to ensure that you have made it through the last twenty-one months with something of such value to show for it. Today is a day when you can stand atop the mountain of that success and rightly feel very proud of what you have achieved.
I hope that all of you will be proud to call yourself a St Andrews graduate for the rest of your life, but all of you will venture forth to new challenges – whether that is further study, the world of work, or any number of other pursuits. Being an engaged and driven person means making the effort to learn and develop throughout one’s life, and that means constantly striving toward the next opportunity. It’s a sentiment embodied by the University motto, Ever to Excel, which is an instructive principle to guide you through the journey ahead.
Wherever you adventure next, you will always have the photographs from today to remind you of this moment, and the way you feel currently. Already in this ceremony, several hundred photographs will have been taken. Some will already have been texted, Tweeted, Instagrammed, etc. That is indeed probably happening in this hall, with more or less surreptitiousness, as I speak. When in a few minutes we all process outside it will be to a blizzard of photos, posed and informal, of selfies, class photos, photos with large pieces of inflatable equipment, later on in the Quad, by the Castle or Cathedral, in the North Sea if you’re feeling brave, with the Principal if you’re feeling braver, and lovely photos with family and friends.
It was not of course always so. Many of us from the generations above yours have few photographs from our graduation ceremonies, apart from the awkwardly balanced one with the scroll and the mortar board in front of a bland University background against which we were lined up for all of 30 seconds before it was someone else’s turn. You should all be very thankful that St Andrews traditional dress dispenses with mortarboards, which do terrible things to one’s hair. By contrast, you will have many photos to encapsulate this glorious day, hairdos intact, but there will nonetheless be one or two that you come back to inexorably because they capture the essence of what this day means to you. Every picture tells a story, but some will always tell it more meaningfully than others.
The University of St Andrews has strong associations with the early history of photography in Great Britain, in part through the engagement and encouragement of one of my predecessors as Principal, Sir David Brewster. Sir David was a physicist specialising in optics who, amongst other things, invented the kaleidoscope, and he was a friend and collaborator of William Henry Fox Talbot who invented the calotype – a photography processing technique – in 1839. Sir David worked to foster an interest in such emerging photographic techniques through his Vice-Presidency of the St Andrews Literary and Philosophical Society – a group through which he inspired the emergence of leading photographic practitioners including Robert Adamson. Sir David later served as the first President of the Photographic Society of Scotland, founded in 1856, and his position within the heart of Scotland’s flourishing photographic culture has made our university a global leader on this subject. Our photographic collection dates to 1844 and contains over one million items of historical significance, all of which are archived in our special collections and are accessible for research purposes. Students come to St Andrews from around the world to benefit from this, either as researchers or as master’s students on our prestigious History of Photography MLitt programme, and our School of Art History accommodates leading experts on photographic history and culture, such as Dr Natalie Adamson and Dr Luke Gartlan.
Photography in Sir David’s time was necessarily a specialised activity, as determined by the resource required to engage in the early practice. But the advance of technology has led to a proliferation of photographic activity, such that many of us can snap photos so much more readily. Nonetheless I do still encourage all of you to choose your subjects carefully. If taking a photograph is a way of recording your engagement with the world, then I urge you all to pursue the most exciting subjects in the most far-flung places. Mirror-selfies are good for dating profiles at a pinch, but you are privileged to have the ability to photograph anything you desire. Choose boldly and dream larger than your bathroom.
Choosing what to photograph can be a political act, too. In Susan Sontag’s seminal book, On Photography, published in 1977 as the ability to take photos was becoming more ubiquitous, she envisages the photographer as someone who is engaged in the act of imprisoning reality, and she goes so far as to claim that the unwitting subject is violated by the photographer’s lens. I’m sure your friends will be very happy to jump into photographs in a moment’s time, Susan’s views aside, but Susan does valuably remind us that what and who we photograph is important, and that the resulting images attain a symbolic value which can be sentimental, but also political, and that photographs can accumulate meaning over time in ways that the photographer never intended.
As St Andrews graduates, you see the world through highly-educated eyes, and can approach social issues, structures and events with greater nuance and complexity as a result. It is up to you to view, record and shape the world as you see fit, and I encourage all of you to use the abilities you have developed here to shine light on issues that need your attention, to champion causes of note, and to bring about a vision of the world that improves perpetually on the society you are inheriting. That is the way to be an exemplary St Andrews graduate.
I, for one, have always loved photos, both taking and viewing them, and my office in College Gate is filled with images of members of our University community on special occasions much like today. These photos remind me of the quality of our students, the remarkable work being carried out by our researchers, and of the way that our institution has improved the world for over 600 years. I very much hope that the photos you take today will remind you of your place within that lineage, and of the friends and loved ones who have made it possible and who will support you throughout your life. So in addition to remembering to say cheese when you yourself are photographed, remember to thank your loved ones today; and remember, whenever you look at the photos in years to come, that you will always be a part of this community, and that St Andrews will always, wherever you may be, be your home and a part of your story.
Professor Sally Mapstone FRSE
Principal and Vice-Chancellor