Blog Post #35

A Return to Glasgow.

When it comes to street photography the big cities always provide lots of opportunities and Glasgow, my home town, is no exception. I try and get back home at every opportunity and such an opportunity presented itself last weekend (29th April). I headed up on the Thursday actually to avoid the public holiday traffic but in the end my normal travel time of four and a half hours became eight and a half hours due to a bad accident that closed the M6 at Carlisle.

On the Friday I headed out with my camera and some of my Zines that I had to deliver to Street Level Photoworks, which was to be my first stop. The SLP Gallery have been great in helping me to get my work out there and in no time the Zines were for sale again in the book store. I took the opportunity whilst there to view the latest exhibition at the venue which was entitled “This Separated Isle”, and it runs until the 15th May. It is an interesting exhibition made up of straightforward portraits of various people and each shot is accompanied by a narrative that outlines their opinions on topics such as Brexit, Nationalism and discrimination. It was interesting to read the opinions of the diverse group of individuals.

From SLP I headed up to The Barras. Although it was Friday and The Barras would not be open, it was a great opportunity to get some different shots of the location in the strong sunlight that we had on that day. It is an eerie place when empty which proves that The Barras needs people around it so I hope that soon it is back to its former glory

After meandering through The Barras for a while I headed back west to The Glasgow Gallery of Photography. This venture originated in The Savoy Centre in Sauchiehall St bvut last year found itself having to source a new location. The new gallery in Glassford St. is much better both location wise and from a professional presentation point of view. It didn’t officially open until the following day but the bookshop was open so I took the opportunity to pop my head in and say hello to Michael, the gallery owner. I did visit the gallery again the following day to view the International Street Photography exhibition. It is worth a visit to see this exhibition and it runs until May 14th. The exhibition space is downstairs from the bookshop and provides ample wall space for exhibits. I look forward to seeing the gallery and Michael succeed with this venture.

After the gallery visit I roamed the streets for a while before catching the subway out to Kelvinhall in order to visit another exhibition in the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery. I had been particularly looking forward to seeing this exhibition, “Coming Into View”, by Glasgow photographer Eric Watt. I knew Eric from his days with Queen’s Park Camera Club, but sadly he passed away in 2005. His camera club work was very different to his Glasgow streets work. I knew from having conversations with him that his passion lay in photographing the streets so it was fortunate that after his passing his work was recovered by his family. The images in the exhibition are an excellent record of Glasgow from the 1960’s until his departure to the big darkroom in the sky. Having known Eric I felt a personal connection to these photos and it was great to see them being exhibited.

The following day, Saturday, was a typical damp and rainy day and the glorious sun and warmth of Friday was long gone. I did however have a few plans and was soon heading back up to The Barras. As well as taking photos I wanted to attend The Pipe Factory open doors day. You may recall from a previous blog post that I have been involved with the “Barras 100” celebrations and exhibited my work there, well this event was to gather memories and anecdotes from locals and anyone who fondly remembered the heyday of The Barras. I was once again delighted they chose to use one of my photos on the poster advertising the event. It was great to meet up with Stephen and Jenny again and discuss the things people were bringing forward as their fond memories. One that always sticks with me is the description of The Barras, “We buy junk and sell antiques”. I was also delighted to get a tour of The Pipe factory which is under renovation. It was an original clay pipe factory and the architecture is amazing.

The rest of the day consisted of the aforementioned visit to the exhibition at The Glasgow Gallery of Photography and walking around in the rain. I have still to post-process the photos I took over the weekend as I am finding it difficult at times working on a screen with my cataract. Thankfully its getting operated on this month. I will be updating my website with some of these images as soon as things get back to normal.

I hope you have enjoyed this blog post and thank you for reading it. If you want to comment on this blog post please do so below or you can contact me by using the “Contact Me” facility in the website header.

Peter Degnan