The Scene from Within
Gerry D’Ambrosio, Mandy Edwards, Keith Ingham & Malcolm Hill
19th July – 5th October 2025
In 1976 a group of four photographers from Partick Camera Club were invited by Elspeth King (Keeper of Social History at the People’s Palace Museum) to do a survey of The Calton, in the inner-East area of Glasgow, which Street Level sits on the periphery of. This area, like much of Glasgow, was due for demolition/reconstruction as part of a redevelopment programme which saw swathes of people moved from the dilapidated tenements to the peripheral housing estates like Easterhouse, and the new towns of Irvine and Cumbernauld.
The photographers in this project were Malcolm R Hill, Keith Ingham, Jim Gillies, and Roy Smart, who developed several hundred photographs, 500 of which were exhibited in the People’s Palace over the summer of 1977. Works by two of the photographers, Keith Ingham and Malcolm R Hill, are included in this exhibition and are a selected few from that wider photographic survey of the city, which has become an important social record of Glasgow in the late 1970s. Hill, was inspired by the work of Oscar Marzaroli (1933-88) in ‘moving away from the more standard camera club fare of still-life competitions, to use the camera as a tool to document social change, and to catch the immediacy and impact of the moment’ (Keith Ingham in conversation with Fiona Hayes in the now out-of-print book ‘1970s Glasgow: Through the Lens’, published by Glasgow Museums).
In the sixties, Gerry D’Ambrosio ran a gaming machine business, along with his cousin, which brought him into many of Glasgow’s roughest pubs where he was accepted by the owners and customers as ‘one of them’. Late at night, after work, Gerry and his cousin would stop in The Jungle before going home, an old-style Glasgow pub in the Cowcaddens area. Even by the standards of inner-city Glasgow, The Jungle had a reputation, and its clients included some of the city’s most colourful and notorious characters.
Gerry was an enthusiastic amateur photographer. In the early 70s, The Jungle was slated for demolition as large swathes of the old slums were cleared. Gerry realised that the era of the spit-and-sawdust, working men’s inner-city pub was disappearing, so he started bringing his camera to record the life of the pub, which the owner and customers were happy with. Personal and intimate, akin to Swedish photographer Anders Petersen’s embrace of Hamburg’s underbelly in ‘Café Lehmitz’, Gerry’s work is a glimpse into a lost world – the last days of The Jungle.
‘I wanted to photograph the characters that I thought were special in The Jungle. I also wanted to capture the very special light in the pub… Like most Glasgow kids in the 1930s the street was our playground. We played football, were chased by the local policeman and, during the war, picked up the remains of German incendiary bombs.
Mandy Edwards’ portraits bridge a period of time of 15 years - her 2010 project ‘A Celebration’ consisted of portraits of the varied faces of traders/shopkeepers in the Dalmarnock and Glasgow’s East End, which overall explored the social landscape, the project motivated by the perceived threat of redevelopment as the Commonwealth Games of 2014 drew near. In other words, capturing people and places that may disappear, which is the thematic glue of the overall exhibition ‘The Scene from Within’. Encouraged by a continued interest in that original project, and the awareness of Glasgow hosting another Commonwealth Games in 2026 (albeit much stripped back from its earlier extravaganza) she returned to the impulse of the original to update her tribute to the modern businesspeople who represent this small corner of post-imperial Glasgow. She has called her project ‘Merchants of the Empire’s Second City’ and it offers an opportunity to explore how cultural narratives and social issues have changed or persisted over time, in demographics, the economy, and in work patterns, so in that sense, offers an opportunity for reflection – and also looking forward!
With thanks to: Fiona Hayes and Katie Bruce of Glasgow Life for providing the images of Malcolm R Hill’s from the Glasgow Museums collection; to Paul Adair, Collections Officer at Perth Museum & Art Gallery for the prints of Gerry D’Ambrosio, for bringing his work to our attention, and to Gerry’s daughter, Dorothy Rourke, for her enthusiasm and sharing items and insights into his work; and to Keith Ingham and Mandy Edwards for their valued input and cooperation.
Banner Image: © Keith InghamLeft Image: © Gerry D’Ambrosio
