Joseph McKenzie moved to Dundee in 1964 and fell in love with the City. Dundee and its people would become his most enduring subject-matter. This began with the study Dundee: A City in Transition which he worked on between 1964-66 with some 441 individual images acquired by Dundee Art Galleries and Museums in 1990. The study comprised of a series of individual and in-depth essays:
· Impressions of the City
· Women of Dundee
· Death of a Station
· People in Jute
· Men and Locomotives
· Building the Tay Road Bridge.
The last essay was commissioned by William Fairhurst the designer of the road bridge and involved McKenzie being suspended through the open door of an RAF Westland helicopter and taking aerial photographs of the bridge and surrounding areas. The study was exhibited in Dundee in August 1966 to celebrate the opening of the bridge.
A second Dundee essay Hawkhill: Death of a Living Community was photographed between 1965-86. Some 450 individual images and were acquired by Dundee Art Galleries and Museums in 2002.
McKenzie's entire archive of Dundee extends to some 10,000 negatives. It is considered one of the most extensive and comprehensive records of change to a British city undertaken by a single artist.
