And so I come to the end of a month-long series of images celebrating all things Glaswegian/Scottish to acknowledge Cop26, the UN Climate Change Conference.
I made this shot from Sauchiehall & Kelvin Way. With lawn bowlers in the foreground, you can see the Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum to the left and, in the distance, the tower of the University of Glasgow.
I captured this image on Sauchiehall Street at its intersection with Renfield Street. Although Sauchiehall is pedestrian friendly, it still requires people to deal with vehicular traffic at intersections. Here, a visually challenged person waits to cross Renfield Street while a sign on the adjacent post states: “Think Before You Step Out.”
This is reminiscent of signage in my hometown, Toronto, where a spate of cycling deaths prompted the ironically named Vision Zero program. The city developed an advertising campaign directed at cyclists to take more care on busy urban streets. It has a lot in common with “blame the victim” rhetoric. It tries to persuade the most vulnerable people on the street that it’s their responsibility to take precautions for their own safety. Meanwhile, infrastructure continues to favour the least vulnerable people on the street i.e. the people driving vehicles.
But when a sign asks a blind person who cannot see the sign to think before they step off the curb, as if thinking has anything to do with it, we note the absurdity of the rhetoric. Drivers have responsibilities too, and maybe those responsibilities should be in proportion to the harm they can do.
Cop26 gives us an opportunity to rethink the role of vehicular traffic, especially in densely populated areas. Maybe we can rethink the rhetoric, too.
Strictly speaking, this photograph shouldn’t be included in my Cop26 Glasgow series because it’s a shot of a sign in Edinburgh with St. Mary’s Cathedral in the background. However, I think the sign’s message is fitting to the occasion.
As a Canuck, I had never seen such a sign before. Fortunately, Transport Scotland, in cooperation with the UK’s three other regional governments, has kindly posted its Traffic Signs Manual on Scribd. We find an explanation in Chapter 8 – Traffic Safety Measures and Signs for Road Works and Temporary Situations. Although Chapter 8 runs to 229 pages, if we dig into the document, we find an explanation on page 43. Basically, in the case of a street that can accommodate only one lane of traffic, traffic from one direction gets priority and traffic from the other direction has to yield. Unless, of course, a temporary sign advises that the priorities have been changed.
When I first made this shot, I thought maybe I could use it as a commentary on the way the spiritual life forces us to change our priorities. But now, as we come to recognize that certain of our habits have brought not just us, but all life, to the brink of an existential cliff, the image suggests to me that we need to rethink those habits. Now, this image speaks to me less of the spiritual life than of the practical matter of sustaining biological life. To the extent it invokes the spiritual life, it does so by calling on religious institutions to support us in our efforts to rework how we live in relation to one another, to all living creatures, and to the planet at large. This is a matter of justice and, as I view it, religion that doesn’t serve the ends of justice has no place in our future.
This is the most sentimental photograph you are ever likely to see on this web site. If you were expecting a colder gaze from me, I apologize and promise not to do anything like this again.
This is a sign that stands at one end of the South Portland Street Suspension Bridge, a pedestrian walkway across the Clyde River in Glasgow. Maybe it upsets you that somebody vandalized the sign by painting a heart on it and the words: “i love you.” Personally, I regard the sign as a form of vandalism. It’s title is “Clyde Bridges.” We don’t need a sign to tell us that; it’s fucking obvious. All the sign does is get in the way. The graffiti is an improvement.
Whenever I visit another city, I find myself inevitably drawing comparisons to my hometown. Sometimes I observe things that make me glad I live where I do. In Glasgow, for example, I’m struck by the relative cultural and ethnic homogeneity of the local population. I come from a city where more than half the population identifies as a visible minority and where more than half the population was born in another country. As odd as it may seem, I find it disturbing to enter a space where most everybody looks like me. Difference is a comfort.
At the same time, Glasgow has many features to commend it, including the availability of public lavatories. This strikes me as a sensible response to a homogeneity of a different sort: we are all alike in our need to pee. Stuck right in the middle of town, near the intersection of Buchanan Street and St. Vincent Place, is a great black behemoth where people can find sweet relief. Toronto has no such public facilities. As I have documented elsewhere, Toronto is hostile to the idea of the public lavatory. City politicians fret that homeless people might sully their fine facilities so they prefer to deny them to everyone than to share them with people of all stations.
I haven’t visited Glasgow since the global pandemic gripped us, so I can’t say if that may have changed the Glaswegian approach to public facilities. I hope not. There is something heartening about a town that frankly acknowledges (and answers) a universal human need.
This is a photo of “serviced apartments” which I hope is a euphemism for “hotel rooms”. Maybe some of the people attending Cop26 will stay here. It’s on Bath Street and not that far from the venue. However, I did not post this photo so I could provide accommodation advice to Cop26 delegates. I posted it because, reflected in its windows is Renfield St Stephens Parish Church.
If I felt inclined to write a book about superstition, the story of this church would get a chapter all to itself. During a storm in 1998, lightning struck the tower and it collapsed into the sanctuary, pretty much destroying everything. This happened on … you guessed it … St Stephens Day. I don’t know what St Stephen had against this church, but clearly you shouldn’t mess with him; he has pull with the people who manage the weather.
While I can imagine that the local congregation was bewildered and grief-stricken, nevertheless its response is worth holding up as an exemplar of building back better. The church now has a sanctuary that serves as a multi-purpose flexible space. It also has a kitchen and café, all glass and fronting the street, making it more accessible to the local community.
This is the back end of Glasgow’s Queen Street train station shot from Cathedral Street. I love the way the struts fan out in a peacock display (assuming the peacock is colour blind). I imagine most of the Cop26 delegates and support staff will never see the inside of this or any other train station. They’ll fly into Paisley and take limos to their hotels. Trains are for ordinary folk.
One train ride I took from this station up to Lenzie was particularly memorable. We (by we I mean my wife and I and another couple) had been at a celebration in George Square to mark the homecoming of Olympic athletes who had performed well at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. By the time we were ready to go home, it was late and the trains were packed. Mark and I found seats at one end of a car and our wives found seats at the other end of the car. Seated across from us were two thirty-something women who were modestly drunk and very chatty. They thought it would be a great idea if we came home with them for some drinks. Mark and I looked at one another and laughed, but nicely. Meanwhile, our wives were looking on from the other end of the car, also laughing, maybe not so nicely.
I thanked them for the offer but, I said, we already agreed to go home for drinks with two other women.
“Ooooh,” says one of the women, “you have an accent. Are you American?”
“No, I’m Canadian.”
“Ach! Same difference.”
Mark laughed and, setting aside his native brogue, said in his best imitation of John Wayne: “Them’s fightin’ words, sister.”
You’d think people in the throes of independence marches and referendums would be more sensitive these differences.
“Return to Sender” is a mixed media sculpture by Sean Read on display at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum. It’s cheesy, catholic, pomo. Kind of like Cop26.
Skinny legs. Fat paunch. This is late Elvis. The Elvis of drugs and bad food and self-loathing. And yet Sean Read has given him a neon halo. We want to say things like: “it shows how redemption is possible even for someone as far gone as him.” But that’s not how grace works, is it? Redemption is possible especially for someone as far gone as him.
I wonder what the janitor does at the end of the day when everyone has left and the Kelvingrove has fallen silent. Does he flip the switch to the halo and walk away like it’s nothing? Or does he pause for a second, like someone caught in a liturgical moment, and genuflect. Maybe he swishes his hips, or contort his lips. Maybe he gives thanks to the king. Tibi ago gratias.
The Kelvingrove is near Finnieston which is the district of Glasgow where the Cop26 venue is located. This photo looks out the southwest entrance onto Argyle Street and, beyond it, Regent Moray Street which leads down to the venue, or would if it were a through street. The Kelvin in Kelvingrove refers to the river that flows nearby and which also gave its name to William Thomson who became the first Lord Kelvin for his work as a physicist and mathematician.
Yeah, like you care.
More interesting to me (and probably you) is what’s inside the building, including an amazing sculpture of St. Elvis complete with a neon halo, and Salvador Dali’s Christ of St John on the Cross which was attacked by a rock-wielding nut in the 60’s and slashed in the 80’s by another nut. I guess religion will do that to you. I felt like slashing it, too, but managed to restrain myself.
I was standing somewhere on the Glasgow Necropolis when I made this shot of the Church Lane with its bridge spanning Wishart Street and continuing on up to the St. Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art. The museum was, for a short time, home to one of my favourite paintings, Salvador Dali’s Christ of St John of the Cross. It has moved to the Kelvingrove but I personally prefer the more intimate and brighter setting at St. Mungo’s.
Not far from where I was standing is one of my favourite graves. Yes, I have favourite graves. It is the resting place of a renowned Scottish industrialist named Charles Tennant, inventor of bleach. Owing to the caustic nature of the ingredients in his bleach recipe, the people who worked in his factory tended to lose their faces. Literally. The workers inhaled the stuff and it ate away the nose cartilage so their faces collapsed. Ironically, acid rain has worked its magic on the statue of Charles Tennant, so it has suffered the same fate as Tennant himself inflicted upon his workers. Not quite karma, but close.
When we see the bagpipes, our minds immediately think of Scotland. When we hear the bagpipes, our minds immediately think of cats tied to the back of cars and dragged through city streets. No one would listen to the bagpipes for the mere pleasure of it. Would they? Then again, this is a people who thinks sheep’s offal stuffed with oatmeal into its stomach is a delicacy and washes it down with liquefied dirt (Laphraoig). Why then would it surprise us that they have such taste in music?
I caught this piper at a Scottish independence march: All Under One Banner (AUOB), passing through Nelson Mandela Square in the centre of Glasgow. It seems the vaguely racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric wafting up from the Tory government south of the border has galvanized many Scots. That and the economic fallout from Brexit. As a Canuck, I sympathize. We’ve had to put up with the stink of vaguely racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric wafting from south of our border too.
Rev. Mark Johnstone, minister of Glasgow Cathedral, has been posting notices on social media promoting special services at the Cathedral during Cop26. Of the 30,000 delegates and support staff descending on the city, presumably some of them will want a quiet place to centre themselves. Here’s a photo of Mark chatting with my wife, Tamiko, in the vestry.
In the early days of the pandemic, Mark broadcast a service in which he included the story of how his friend, Dave, from Canada, once made a complete arse of himself during a service at the Cathedral. The story goes something like this:
A few years ago, before Mark had been called to the Cathedral, he and I went to a vespers service there. Because I was travelling with a small suitcase, I had only one jacket with me, the same jacket I wear when I’m hiking in Northern Ontario, waterproof, all purpose, red (so hunters don’t shoot me), and loaded with handy Velcro straps. During the service, the minister at the time, Laurence Whitley, invited everyone to bow their heads in prayer. I was jet-lagged and happy to fold my arms and slouch low in the pew. But when the prayer was done, I found that the Velcro on my jacket sleeves had stuck to the Velcro on opposite pockets, so I was constrained like a patient in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. I was stuck and didn’t know what to do.
The problem is that the Cathedral’s acoustics are extraordinarily “live”. You’ve probably heard the expression: you could hear a pin drop. It applies quite literally to the space where I was seated, what is formally called the choir. Mark saw my situation and started to laugh, quietly of course. I decided there was no choice but to tear away the Velcro straps all at once, like ripping off a band-aid. The noise echoed down the nave. Rev. Whitley lost his train of thought. Mark laughed. And I was free.
In April, 2020, Mark decided the story would make a good sermon illustration. He was trying to get at that feeling of breaking free that we all have craved after our long periods of self-isolation and masking and social distancing. The BBC also broadcast his service so now half the UK knows about his idiot friend named Dave from Canada.
This year’s iteration of the UN Conference on Climate Change (Cop26) is sponsored by the UK and held in Glasgow. Needless to say, plunking a UK-sponsored event in the middle of a Scottish city must cause tension given that there is a concerted separatist movement afoot in Scotland that has only gained momentum since Brexit. It must also cause tension for a more practical reason. Cop26 will see 30,000 delegates and support staff descend upon a relatively small town (as a Torontonian, I compare it to Hamilton) with only 15,000 hotel beds. Maybe visitors can double up.
To mark the occasion, I thought I’d devote the month of November to photos from Glasgow and environs. I love the city. I have friends who live there and so I have visited roughly 10 times. I feel at ease there. If not for the insurmountable paperwork, I can imagine myself making it my home.
I shot this piece of graffiti during my last visit in 2019 a little before the pandemic. It nicely captures the conflict at play in these conferences between economic interests and environmental concerns. Mud and grit have accumulated especially over the lower half of the mural. Grit floats on the air in Glasgow. Every time I get off the plane at the airport in Paisley, I can taste it. It serves as a reminder of Glasgow’s role as a ship-building, coal-burning, chemical manufacturing centre of modern industry. No matter how hard it works to scour the city’s dirty corners, it can never quite get rid of all the accumulated grit.
Yellow shares the middle of the visible spectrum with green. Hovering somewhere between 570 and 590 nm, its wavelength is just a little longer and its energy just a little less than green’s.
Yellow is bright, sunny, uplifting. It is the colour of brilliant morning sunlight, the colour of a cracked egg sizzling on the frying pan, the colour of bumble bees spreading pollen through fields of goldenrod.
Despite the feelings of optimism that yellow can engender, it simultaneously holds negative meanings. A coward is yellow, refusing to face duty and preferring instead to flee.
Yellow has long been associated with a racist trope. The Chinese in particular, and Asians generally, have been called yellow. Since the end of the 19th century, Western political forces have toyed with the trope of the Yellow Peril as a way to manipulate anxiety and to galvanize public opinion. Donald Trump is only the latest in a long line of demagogues to leverage Western racism in this way.
Whenever I use my photography to celebrate the colour yellow, I hope, in some small way, to push back against these tiresome tropes.
I received an email from Skylum Software promoting Luminar Neo with its new Line Removal feature (in caps). In just a couple clicks, you can leverage the power of Artificial Intelligence to remove power lines from your photos. Last week it was Adobe’s Photoshop with a new AI tool to change the expression on your subject’s face. Got an otherwise perfect wedding photo spoiled by a frowning bridesmaid? No problem. Select her mouth, click the smile button, and there you go! No one will ever suspect she just heard that her boyfriend is sleeping with the maid of honour.
I’m not sure how I feel about these new reality-bending tools. I suppose my reaction depends upon what I think photography is for. If I’m trying to make pretty images, then I should be happy to have tools that optimize their prettiness. On the other hand, if I’m trying to record my encounters with the world I actually inhabit, then maybe these tools are just a distraction. The world I inhabit is full of power lines and micro plastics, landfill sites and buildings that tower over the forests.
I can tolerate only so many kitschy images before I feel like someone who’s eaten too many slices of cherry pie and needs to vomit.
