C.J. (Clement) Williamson

Shetlopedia - The Shetland Encyclopaedia

C.J. Williamson, Shetland photographer and author, was born Clement John Inkster Williamson, on the 18th of January 1904 in Scalloway, the second son of John Williamson and Margaret Inkster. He is remembered by many as proprietor of the small photography shop in Scalloway called 'The Studio', for so long a feature of the Scalloway foreshore. He typically signed his photographs 'CJ Williamson'. Williamson was also the official photographer for the Shetland Bus, taking photos of agents for ID papers and so forth, and he provided a number of plates for Peter Jamieson's Letters from Shetland, 1949. He was also a linguist, speaking Norwegian and French amongst others.

He was a regular contributor to The New Shetlander and his short stories were collected in 'Skipper Dick and other Shetland Stories' (Shetland Times, 1973) and 'At the Oil Camp and other Shetland Tales', (The Studio, 1977). A 'Selected Stories ...' was published in 1991.

He was also a devotee of sound-recording and the BBC Radio program called "The Other Trawler", which told the story of the wrecking of the Ben Doran (A178) in 1930 and the Elinor Viking (A278) in 1977, was based around recordings made by Clement on a reel-to-reel recorder sometime in the early 50s, when he interviewed as many people as he could who had been involved in the Ben Doran rescue attempts.

Clement Williamson died on the 18th of April, 1994, at New Street, Scalloway, aged ninety. He was greatly missed by the Scalloway community.