The Heart of it: Heart of Midlothian on film

Words: Robert Borthwick

Images: Robert Borthwick

Shot on Zenit-EM.

I’ve been football daft for quite literally as long as I can remember.

Booting a ball around Gracemount Leisure Centre for my mate’s fifth birthday is the earliest memory, and it’s been a constant ever since.

Those old photos on 35mm film harking back to kids with curtain haircuts and 90s football kits… some things never do change I suppose.

Heart of Midlothian and Everton Football Club, I never had any choice in the matter. Alex Young – The Golden Vision - is the legendary player that straddled the two and influenced my dad, at the age of around 10, to fall in love with both.

The whole family now bleeds maroon or blue, dependent on which side of the border we’re on at any given time.

The man who took my dad to an Edinburgh Derby in the 1950s where Young scored a hat-trick is responsible for the photos you see in this article.

©Robert Borthwick/ Terrace Edition. Tynecastle Arms. Edinburgh.

My Papa passed away in 2004, and his old camera made its way into my possession. A Zenit-EM, a Russian-built tank of a 35mm camera, that he’d purchased some time in the 1960s.

It lay dormant in my room for over a decade. It then made for a nice ornament in my old office for a few years thereafter. Gathering dust, I assumed it wouldn’t work so well anymore. I was wrong.

It’s taken me a while to get used to, but the buzz of waiting for a roll to come back from the developers has now made me an addict.

I think I’ve probably shot every conceivable angle of Tynecastle Park, with a particular love of shooting through the crowd.

I have gone pitchside and enjoyed a few of the shots, but the analog camera belongs in amongst it.

An authentic viewpoint stockpiling all the emotions and angles you get on a matchday. The walk to the ground, the click through the turnstile, the roar of the crowd, the wander home.

There’s me in the middle, fiddling with a 60-year-old camera trying to show every single one of my 216 Instagram followers how it feels to be there.