Oscar Marzaroli was, of course, the Scottish filmmaker who became famous for his photographs of Glasgow in the 1960s. Depicting life on the street, with an absolute emphasis on both life and street, he captured the transition between the old city and the brave new world of tower blocks and social redesign, as the Hutchesontown and Red Road Flats rose above the ghosts of the rundown tenements of old Glasgow.
The images in this exhibition comprise the familiar, the iconic and the unknown, bringing together some 47 vintage photographs that range from images of children playing in the streets to workers in the docks, the steelyards and the new high rises. Quietly tucked away, a poignant image of a group watching the off-camera destruction of the Gorbals, a hint at the trauma of change in 1960s Glasgow.
Marzaroli, born in Castiglione Vara in northern Italy in 1933, moved to the Garnethill area of Glasgow as a child, later spending a brief time at Glasgow School of Art before moving to Stockholm and working abroad as a photographer, returning to Glasgow in the 1950s.
“The city was changing and I wanted to get it in the can,” he said in an interview in 1986, reproduced in the exhibition catalogue of the Fine Art Society. He felt, he says, a need to establish a rapport with the city and its people, much as were Joan Eardley, Edwin Morgan and Angus Neil, amongst others. Once the old tenements and slums had gone, “the streets looked comparatively devoid of life…” under the new high rise flats. Marzaroli (1933-1988) captured the moment inbetween, blending in to the cityscape and capturing its life with a mixture of both familiarity and freshness.
Eardley was a particular inspiration for Marzaroli, and there are a number of images of the painter in her Townhead studio, including photos of some of the 12 Samson children whom she repeatedly painted in the 1960s. There is a synchronicity between the work of Marzaroli and Eardley, both capturing a way of life fast disappearing, both interested in the people of Glasgow, the individual characters, the essence of place and of life. Eardley is caught informally in Marzaroli’s lens with the children she is painting, smiling, mid-sketch, or in the act of painting. In another image, she is bringing a canvas in through the door of her studio in Catterline, perhaps after a stint of painting on the beach.
Marzaroli’s skill is in capturing life unselfconsciously, in his framing, in his use of light. There is an interest in line and form, in silhouette, in the conjunction of architecture and humanity, of abstraction and life. There are boys playing football on the dockside, or by the canal under the Pinkston cooling tower. Children play on a construction site in the Gorbals, the playgrounds empty. Women gather with prams and washing in the back court of a Gorbals tenement – a long view taken from the high rooves. A girl is captured in the detritus of a run-down tenement court, leaning against a pram, washing flapping above her head. Construction workers drink tea from billy cans in their breaks; a child kneels down longingly before a bookshop window.
There is abject poverty but it sets the scene rather than posing as outright subject matter. Perhaps most of all Marzaroli captures community and ways of life and working which have now changed out of nearly all recognition. Moments in the process of a decade of change and destruction which happened on many more levels, and in many places in Glasgow and far beyond, than simply that of bricks and mortar.
Oscar Marzaroli. Tenements to Towerblocks: Futures Past
Fine Art Society, Dundas Street, Edinburgh
0131 557 4050 www.fasedinburgh.com
Until 23rd December. Mon–Fri 10am–6pm; Sat 11am–2pm
Sarah Urwin Jones
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