Oscar Marzaroli, Roger Billcliffe Gallery, Glasgow until February 1
billcliffegallery.com
HE photographed Joan Eardley in her studio in Townhead, Glasgow, in the 1950s, and like her Oscar Marzaroli was not born in Scotland. Marzaroli was born in Castiglione in Italy in 1933. His family settled in Garnethill, Glasgow, when he was just two-years-old and made several trips back and forth to Italy when he was growing up.
In the same way Eardley was able to view her adopted country at arms' length, so Marzaroli brought a cool, yet affectionately clear eye to the business of photographing the day-to-day life of a rapidly changing city.
One of the images Marzaroli took of Eardley (uncharacteristically smiling) features in this new exhibition of his Glasgow photographs at the Roger Billcliffe Gallery just off Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow city centre.
Marzaroli was documenting the city at a time of great change. He captured the docks and the shipyards before their decline in the 1960s and 1970s. He photographed Ravenscraig in its heyday and witnessed the construction of the huge blocks of flats that replaced the slums of Townhead, The Gorbals, Anderston and Cowcaddens.
In the same way that Eardley will be remembered for pinning down street life in paint or on paper before it vanished, Marzaroli will be remembered for his fleeting black and white glimpses of inner-city Glasgow life. Kids playing in the streets and back greens are captured for posterity against a backdrop of derelict tenements awaiting demolition with the skeletons of the new city blocks being assembled across the street.
All the prints in this exhibition are vintage pieces, printed by Marzaroli himself before his death, at the age of just 55, in 1988.
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