"Who invented photography?" is not an easy question to answer. Daguerre, most people think, though the Frenchman announced his discovery of how to make and fix a photographic image in the same year as Henry Fox Talbot in England. Moreover, neither were working in isolation; in both Britain and France, there had been something of a race towards this new technology. And then there's the much longer history of the camera obscura - described as early as the 10th century.
Where, then, to slot in the pioneering work of Scottish duo David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, from a brief but intensely prolific period (3,000 images produced between 1843 and 1847) showcased in this exhibition? They were not the first to master the science of photography, but they were among the first to reveal its artistic potential.
One of the many fascinations of this superbly curated exhibition is how Hill and Adamson's pushing of photography into new aesthetic challenges led to so much of what would follow. Documentary essays, the art photography of Julia Margaret Cameron, the formal portrait and even action shots - all the beginnings are here.
Hill and Adamson began working together in 1843 when Hill turned to photography to provide source material for his hugely ambitious historical painting of the Disruption (the secession of 450 ministers from the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland), a work that took him 23 years to complete. Compared with this, the long exposure times for the early photographs, often up to three minutes, must have seemed racy. It is because of such technological constraints that the work produced by this partnership is so astounding. Their portraits have an informality about them that belies the conditions in which they were produced, and contradicts most notions about Victorian portraiture. A tender image of Hill, for example, taken after the death of his wife, with their daughter Charlotte, feels markedly modern in its capturing of the bond between father and child.
Much of the dynamism and atmosphere in these prints is produced by the photographic process itself, the blurry result of the calotype technique that Hill credits with giving "the very life" to their work. It is especially evocative in images of Edinburgh, a fast-changing city of new landmarks and moody, gloomy medieval sites, and in portraits of the 92nd Gordon Highlanders, portrayed in a haze of energy. Alongside portraits of the great and good of Edinburgh, there is an absorbing series of images documenting life in the fishing villages along the Firth of Forth. These brooding portraits of hardship and the ties that bind in these communities glimpse into lives hitherto unseen. Hill and Adamson achieved a new way of looking, and at last there is an exhibition that pays a fitting tribute.
· Until September 15. Details: 0131-624 6200.
