Photographic artwork of the Forth Bridge - a work by the German artist Dieter Appelt which is worth nearly £60,000 - is the latest acquisition of the National Galleries of Scotland.
A £25,000 grant from The Art Fund, the leading art charity, helped the NGS purchase the striking work, which is to form the centrepiece of an exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery from October 9 to January 6 next year.
Appelt's work will be displayed alongside a series of rarely-seen historical photographs, documenting the rail bridge's construction between 1883 and 1889, taken by the engineer Evelyn George Carey.
Called Forth Bridge - Cinema.Metric Space, Mr Appelt's work consists of 312 separate silver prints which make up a montage reconstruction of the iconic bridge.
Appelt made a 35mm film of the bridge, running the camera along a track dolly on the parallel Forth Road Bridge half a mile away, and each of the prints in the final work were crafted from separate stills from the film.
Forth Bridge - Cinema.Metric Space was made by Appelt in an edition of three, with the other examples in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal.
The artist has said the work "emerges like a musical score from the filmic frame", and as the eye follows the bridge's frame, a sense of "crescendo and diminuendo" is visible.
David Barrie, the director of The Art Fund said: "The Forth Rail Bridge is an iconic piece of Scottish engineering, and Appelt's dramatic representation is a highly appropriate purchase for the National Galleries of Scotland.
"The work will make an excellent centrepiece for the Scottish National Portrait Gallery's forthcoming exhibition, and I'm delighted that, thanks to The Art Fund, it will have a permanent home in Edinburgh."
Appelt is considered to be one of the most significant German artists of the post-Second World War era.
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