Blog Post #70

Govanhill exhibition #2

A few weeks ago I travelled back up to Glasgow, primarily for my mother’s 90th birthday celebrations. As with any trip that I make to my home town, I like to take advantage of being there and get out with the camera and maybe also take in a photography exhibition or two. As it happened I had to drop into Street Level Photoworks on the Saturday to drop off some zines and this gave me the ideal opportunity to take another look at Simon Murphy’s excellent “Govanhill” exhibition. Whilst there I got chatting with my friend Malcolm Dickson who is the Director of Street Level Photoworks and whilst we were chatting Simon Murphy arrived. Simon was there to give a talk/guide of the exhibition to the public at 2pm. After some introductions from Malcolm, Simon and I got chatting about our photography. When I explained that due to family commitments I couldn’t stay for the talk, Simon offered to give me a tour of the exhibition there and then. It was fascinating learning the story behind many of the shots and of why he laid the exhibition out the way he did. A lot of thought and effort goes into producing and presenting the work and in my opinion this really paid off. I really appreciated the time Simon spent with me and his thoughts and comments left me inspired. If you haven’t seen it yet I thoroughly recommend it. It is on until the 27th January and details can be found at this link. If you can’t make it along, Street Level Photoworks have created this 3D virtual visit for you to enjoy. Click here.

Thankfully I had also managed to secure a copy of the book accompanying the exhibition, also called “Govanhill”. On opening the book I was very pleased to see it signed by Simon and that it was a first edition print, number 188/500.

As with any trip back to Glasgow, I managed to sneak in a visit to The Barras with the camera. I headed along there before my visit to Street Level as the morning sunshine was very strong. As it was Glasgow, the strength of the sun gives no indication as what the temperature would be as it was rather chilly. When I left my mother’s house I had to give the car a good defrost and the standing temperature said -5°C ! With very contrasty light I wandered around The Barras and the surrounding area and grabbed some shots for my Barras collection. Here are a few.

As I mentioned in my blog a few weeks ago, I may look into playing around with video with a view of making some YouTube videos of my photos. I have an idea to produce a 2023 retrospective video on of my favourite photos from the past year. I have both iMovie and Da Vinci software for making videos so I will be playing around with these soon and hope to be able to have the video finished around the turn of the year. Well that’s the plan anyway.

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.

Pete