Glasgow Zine Library

Glasgow Zine Library in Govanhill is a fantastic community resource. They have thousands of zines by local creators in their archives – including these four by me! 

Aldo and Aldous 

24 pages, 16 colour photographs 

My friends Harry and Ieva live with their young son Aldous and their two cats Clyde and Felix in a large house, which was built in the 1970s by two Italian migrants to Scotland named Aldo and Raffaella, who lived here together and raised a family. These photographs are about the encounter between Aldo and Aldous: two people who never met, but Aldous is discovering the world in a home still shaped by the love of Aldo and Raffaella. 

Glasgow Anonymous 

36 pages, 22 colour photographs 

The photographs in this booklet depict locations where Cocaine Anonymous meetings take place in Glasgow. These meetings are not just made up of anonymous individuals; they also take place in anonymous spaces: borrowed rooms in church halls, community centres, or hospitals. Such buildings don’t draw attention to themselves; they sit within the broader landscape of the city. But they’re still visible, if you’re paying attention. 

Greenock/Gourock 

36 pages, 30 colour photographs 

I live in Gourock; I go shopping in Greenock. I walk around Gourock; I travel to Greenock by bus. This zine is about the differences and similarities between the two places. 

Suburbia is a place where dogs bark at solitary walkers. Being without a car and being alone are both inherently suspicious states of being – taking photographs is even worse. If I could completely efface myself, I would. I live a marginal existence, and I wanted these photos to express that: to depict not a to depict not an invasion of privacy, but a reluctance to trespass. A sense of distance and withdrawal – of tactfulness. 

A Zone 

32 pages, 37 colour photographs 

A Zone is a photographic survey of the neighbourhood where I lived from 2018–21 – close to Glasgow city centre, in the shadow of the Kingston Bridge and M8 flyover. Not a neighbourhood then: a zone. Neglected by planners, shoppers and tourists alike, it offers a sample of all the kinds of activities we usually ignore in the modern city.

Greenock/Gourock

I've just finished a new photo zine, called Greenock/Gourock. It contains 30 images, 15 from each of the two locations in the title, in juxtaposed pairs. Here's the introductory text, and a few image pairs:

I live in Gourock; I go shopping in Greenock. I walk around Gourock; I travel to Greenock by bus. This zine is about the differences and similarities between the two places. 

Gourock (current population 10,000) was originally a fishing village, then a seaside resort, and is now a suburban residential area. It has a few shops, but no real economy. Rather, people travel from there to work, mainly by car. Some no doubt have jobs in Greenock, but others commute to Glasgow, which is about an hour away on the motorway. I rent a room here, but the area where I live is mostly a zone of owner-occupation, with detached or semi-detached houses set back from the street by gardens. However, Gourock also has several areas of public housing, which are more densely inhabited and have more generic architecture. 

Greenock (current population 41,000) is a larger regional centre, with local government buildings for Inverclyde Council, a shopping mall, chain supermarkets, etc. But it is itself a satellite of Glasgow, and its nineteenth-century prosperity depended on that proximity: that is, it is closer to the mouth of the Clyde Estuary than Glasgow, so it was easier and cheaper for some ships to unload sugar, tobacco and cotton there rather than continue on to the larger city. The town was also a centre for shipbuilding and related industries. Greenock still has greater visible extremes of wealth disparity than Gourock, with larger council estates, including tower blocks, but also very grand individual houses, most of which seem to date back to the town's heyday. Like many Atlantic ports and old industrial centres, Greenock's fortunes have fallen, but it retains a busy freight-container terminal – and during the summer cruise ships use the town as a base for day trips. 

Suburbia is a place where dogs bark at solitary walkers. Being without a car and being alone are both inherently suspicious states of being – taking photographs is even worse. If I could completely efface myself, I would. I live a marginal existence, and I wanted these photos to express that: to depict not an invasion of privacy, but a reluctance to trespass. A sense of distance and withdrawal – of tactfulness.