Sara Stevenson introduces the 2000 Art of Documentary exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. The Scottish involvement with documentary photography goes back to the photographs taken by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson of the fishermen and women of the Firth of Forth in the 1840s. This extraordinary pioneer work was arguably the origin of the photo-essay of the twentieth century, offering us a view of the working lives of the village of Newhaven. This exhibition focuses on groups of photographs by a number of photographers, working in and from Scotland, in the last forty years. It includes work by Chick Chalmers, John Charity, Catriona Grant, Tricia Malley, Oscar Marzaroli, Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, David Williams, and looks at a range of practice from the intimacy of the family to the distance of street photography.