For five years, Robbie Lawrence travelled across Scotland and the United States with a specific aim: to explore the significance of the Highland Games, events combining sports and folklore, that are held every year in Scotland and in Scottish communities abroad. “The Games as a subject has always interested me, not just visually,” he wrote, “but also as a vehicle for considering how we as Scots allow history to inform our modern identity.

Ultimately the Highland Games remains a community sports tournament. Every event I photographed, whether on a dusty sports field in Denver, or at the local park at Burntisland, is at its core a coming together of friends and family to enjoy sports, dance and music. At first I struggled to look past the myth-making and nationalism often espoused in the Games. I was trying to document these events objectively, without clarifying with myself how I felt about them. Eventually I threw out years of work and started again.” This was the starting point for Long Walk Home, a series turned into an elegant two-volume book which engages with the myriad of fabricated ideas surrounding the modern Highland Games.