Street
Level Photoworks, Glasgow until March 15, 2020
Five
stars
The last time Oscar
Marzarolli’s iconic black and white images of Glasgow were seen in a major
exhibition was in the 1980s, when the dear green place was en route to
reinventing itself as culture city. Marzarolli’s iconic depictions of
back-street inner-city urchins at play were heroised on the covers of records
by Deacon Blue, who sang of the dignity of labour in a city all but razed into
rubble.
Thirty-odd years on, and
with Marzarolli’s archive of more than 50,000 images just donated to Glasgow
Caledonian University, the 80-odd photographs on show here are given a new
layer of poignancy by the distance of time. Most of the images were taken
within a short walk from the gallery, but the places and people depicted are pretty
much no more.
The high rises that loom
over a lone Gorbals tenement in The Old and the New sets the tone for an array
of images depicting half-demolished gable ends, half-built tower blocks and crumbling
houses bookending a now empty square, as desolate as the Necropolis beside it.
Marzarolli’s greatest
hits are here – The Castlemilk Lads and Golden Haired Lass – as are the artists
- George Wylie and his straw locomotive; a young and glaikit-looking Alasdair
Gray; the cast of the original production of The Steamie; Bill Forsyth and
Clare Grogan filming Comfort & Joy. But so too are Barrowland dances and the
Clyde Fair. The faces of vulnerable-looking boys are etched with experience
beyond their years.
The Humblebums and Matt
McGinn play on Glasgow Green in support of the 1971 Upper Clyde Shipbuilders
work-in, Billy Connolly louchely playing his banjo as the others raise their
fists in gleeful solidarity. Thousands of Celtic fans at Hampden Park for the 1963
Cup Final share a limbo of collective anxiety. In this way, Marzarolli’s work goes
beyond social-realism to create a haunting visual poetry of a community at
work, rest and play. That’s dignity,
alright.
The List, December 2019
ends
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