The hidden histories of ordinary Edinburgh residents that could one day be ours

You may never walk down the street in the same way again after coming across the work of Edinburgh writer Diarmid Mogg.

After becoming fascinated by the front doors of the tenements of the South Side, he has unravelled the personal histories of the people who lived behind them over hundreds of years.

Ordinary city scenes become a little less ordinary as he detects the ambitions, the failures and the fascinating details that interlaced the lives once lived in the capital’s closes.

Like generations of wallpaper stripped back, tales of the citizens who called these places home reveal themselves as newspaper clippings and archive documents are pieced together to create a unique record of our city.

This history at our feet and feels very much alive and something that we can all get connected to. Mr Mogg has given voices to the forgotten and the disappeared as the impact of success, poverty, poor health, violence, war and emigration are told through the addresses that surround us.

A changing city is also charted through his work, with these properties, once built for the genteel classes of the day, appear run down, rented out and seemingly uncared for in many cases as graffiti marks the once proud entrances in many cases and modern shopfronts track the latest chapters in the long running tales.

Mr Mogg believes his work creates a permanent chain of people and place amid the all-too-often temporary spirit of city living, where we inhabit spaces which have changed hands and been lived in many times before. One day in the future, the stories might well be ours.