Coming Clean is a searingly honest series of 25 self-portraits taken by the renowned Scottish photographer Graham McIndoe. The works, which focus on a period in the artist’s life when he suffered from an addiction to heroin and crack cocaine, are brutally frank and confrontational. These pieces never gloss or glamourise the realities of the addict’s life. In one image, the artist-subject is depicted as staring numbly into the monotonous white light of a TV screen, and in another he is seen standing in front of a window next to a pock-marked ironing board, with the light from outside partially obscuring, and even overwhelming, his profile.

Colin Herd

Coming Clean runs until 5 November at the National Galleries of Scotland. For more information: www.nationalgalleries.org

Credits:
1. Graham MACINDOE (b. 1963), Untitled from the series Coming Clean, negative:2004-2010; printed 2015. Photograph, inkjet prints, 9 x 12 in, Collection: Scottish National Portrait Gallery, purchased 2015, © Graham MacIndoe.