Photography has deep roots in North East Fife. Robert Adamson began his photographic career in St Andrews. His brother John had strong links via David Brewster with the inventor of photography on paper, William Henry Fox Talbot. Adamson set up his studio in Edinburgh, but his photographic forays took him to Fife and the fishing villages on the shores of the Firth of Forth.
This was the heritage that the next generation of photographers built on. Among them was St Monans photographer William Easton (1860-1929) who recorded the life of the village in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. His photographs can be found in the St. Monans Heritage Collection, housed in West Shore, looking onto the village harbour, as well as in published collections of photographs of St Monans and neighbouring areas.