Picturing the work of music photographer Harry Papadopoulos

• The Bluebells in a picture taken by Papadopoulos

IN a swift shutter's click, he captured an era when the sound of Scotland echoed out across Britain and the world. For bands such as Aztec Camera, Orange Juice and The Bluebells it was Harry Papadopoulos, the court photographer of the nation's independent music scene, who defined their striking image.

As a photographer with Sounds, the weekly music magazine and the NME, Papadopoulos worked with every Scots band that emerged during the early 1980s when Glasgow and Edinburgh were the focus of Britain's independent music scene and PostCard Records operated under the slogan: The Sound of Young Scotland.

Now, three decades on, he is to be the subject of a major new photographic exhibition in Glasgow. Yet were it not for the dedication of one of his former subjects, the striking prints would still be mouldering away under the bed of an ill man for whom life has not retained the peppiness of a pop song.

For a decade ago, Papadopoulos, who is 56, suffered a brain aneurysm and now lives in a care home, where he is supported by his brother, Jimmy, an electrician. It was while Jimmy was carrying out work in the Glasgow home of Ken McCluskey, formerly of The Bluebells, that the genesis of the project began.

Between 1979 and 1984, Papadopoulos lived in London and his home in Kensal Rise was a sanctuary for every Scots band that couldn't afford a bed & breakfast, and Ken and his bandmembers were frequent guests with McCluskey regularly joining him in the dark room.

"I lost contact with him and then his brother, Jimmy, was doing some work in my house and when he said he is not so well and had had an aneurysm, I went round to see him. He was living across the road from Partick Thistle's ground. I went to see him in a wee house, he was walking with a zimmer, he looked kind of dishevelled and then he started to show me his photographs.

"He had thousands and thousands of them and his negatives were just lying in a cardboard box – there was a touch of fungus that celluloid gets on them. I said we need to get them out of here. So with his and Jimmy's permission, I digitised all 10,000 of them, which took a couple of years."

He then contacted Malcolm Dickson, director of Street Level Photoworks, a gallery in Glasgow's Trongate, who was delighted to stage an exhibition of his work. Dickson remembered Harry's entrepreneurial side. In the early days he would photograph a concert in Edinburgh one night and be outside the next gig in Glasgow selling finished prints to fans. The eldest son of a Cypriot father and Scots mother, Papadopoulos attended Pennilee Secondary School, then completed a degree in electrical engineering at Paisley Technical College, before later training as a maths teacher. He left the chalkface for the front row of Scotland's rising musical scene where he worked alongside other post-punk photographers such as Robert Sharp and Peter McArthur.

After a successful few years, Papadopoulos moved from photography to editing children's comics such as The Care Bears and Star Trek for Marvel UK, and was later teaching web design before suffering the aneurysm.

"It was an Aladdin's cave of material," said Dickson. "We of a certain generation are familiar with that period, there was a lot of images that have not been shown – it was really covering that ascendant period when Scotland was the nexus of a blossoming independent music scene. We wanted to give a platform to that and the images of the photographer really appealed to me.

"Harry's work will have a resonance in people's lives. There are people's stories in all of these photographs, not just of those of the bands themselves, but the stories of those who remember that particular time."

After the exhibition there are plans to set up a Harry Papadopoulos Foundation with any funds from the sale of prints going to assist the photographer as well as upcoming student photographers.

Among those captured by Papadopoulos 's camera such as Edwyn Collins, Clare Grogan and Annie Lennox were two young Scots who would go on to make a name for themselves, just without aid of a guitar and drum-set. Craig Ferguson, who now presents The Late Late Show in America and Peter Capaldi, the actor and Oscar Winner, were photographed by Papadopoulos at the Third Eye Centre, in Glasgow, in 1980.

As Peter Capaldi, 52, recalls: "We recruited Craig at the Rock Garden at Queen Street. I made a stage announcement saying we were looking for a drummer. It was basically a case of if you had your own kit, you were in. Whether you could actually play or not was not that important, so desperate were we for fame. The Dreamboys were the only Glasgow band John Peel didn't give a session to. I've felt bitter and twisted about that ever since. We had a certain sartorial elegance. My knitted tank top was very early Frank Spencer. It was a geeky look that David Byrne of Talking Heads pulled off with great sophistication. But I didn't have an ounce of that. It's probably got a lot to do with our demise.

"We played the Camden Palace in London – the big gig at the time. It was empty apart from two dozen skinheads with Cockney accents spitting at us. We also supported Altered Images in Sheffield. I wasn't that well travelled back then, so even that was an adventure. I would love to have been a pop star – anyone who says otherwise is a liar."

Yesterday Jimmy Papadopoulos said they had just got some good news and that his brother had secured a place in special facility where he will now receive more intensive treatment. "At the moment he's rather flat and down, so this move is good news. However, he's delighted about the exhibition and we've got a few months to now get him up and ready for it."

For those who benefited from his careful eye and precise composition, there will be a cheer when Harry Papadopoulos steps back into focus.

• What Presence! The Rock Photography of Harry Papadopoulos will be on display at Street Level Photoworks gallery in Glasgow from 17 December to 25 February, 2012.