Review: What Presence! The Rock Photography of Harry Papadopoulos

THERE have not been many moments, if we’re honest, when a groundswell of Scottish bands imprinted themselves on the history of rock music. But there was one such around the turn of the 1980s, when punk was fading and New Romanticism was yet to be born, when Alan Horne’s Postcard Records took “the Sound of Young Scotland” to the world.

Around that time, a Glasgow maths teacher called Harry Papadopoulos hung up his blackboard duster and embarked on a career as a photographer. He was self-taught, taking his camera to gigs in Edinburgh and flogging the photographs when the same band played Glasgow the following night. He would become the man who, more than any other, captured on film the Scottish indie music scene at its height, with bands such as Orange Juice, The Associates, Josef K, The Bluebells and The Fire Engines.

From 1979 until 1984, Papadopoulos was a staff photographer on Sounds, one of the three big, influential weekly music papers. During his tenture, he photographed many of the names of the day including David Bowie, Blondie, The Clash, Bryan Ferry, Spandau Ballet, Wham! and New Order, while retaining a particular soft spot for the Sound of Young Scotland, by then making their own way in London, many of them crashing at his Kensal Rise flat as they did so.

It is their faces which predominate in this, the first exhibition taken from Papadopoulos’ archive. After five years, he moved away from photography, becoming an editor for Marvel Comics, and later taught web design. Ten years ago, he suffered a debilitating brain aneurysm, and his archive might have been lost had The Bluebells’ Ken McCluskey (co-curator of this show) not saved and digitised it.

The exhibition, which spills out of Street Level into the foyer of Trongate 103, has two main strands: the big names Papadopoulos photographed, and the Scottish bands with whom he seems to have spent most time. There is plenty of interest in the first category: a dreamy Marc Almond with his dyed black mop; Iggy Pop, all nonchalance and cool, thumbs tucked into his waistband; Lux Interior of The Cramps in mid yell, bare-chested and sweaty fringed; Rose McDowell of Strawberry Switchblade in big 80s polkadots and loads of eyeliner. But there is perhaps not much that is unique. Many music photographers active around this time would have shots a bit like these.

It is in the second category that his work is of most interest, because he captured, perhaps in more detail than anyone else, that moment in which Scottish indie music was in the ascendancy. His photographs show how New Pop, as it came to be known, was forging its own identity, its fey nonchalance and softly Scottish flavour, an identity as much about visual image as sound.

Looking back over the distance of 30 years, one is most struck by how young everyone looks. One of the first ever portraits of Orange Juice has three of the boys balanced on a scooter borrowed from Papadopolous’s flatmate. The L-plates look highly appropriate, because none of them looks old enough to have a licence. Aztec Camera, clearly trying for both irony and gravitas by wearing tweed jackets and pretending to smoke pipes, look like teenagers dressed up in their grandfather’s clothes. The Ramones, hiding under thick black fringes, wear tight jeans and leather jackets, but they still look like kids dressing up as rock stars.

This was an era of quiffs and feather-cuts, cassettes and fanzines, and the hallowed weekly purchase of the music paper to which one was fiercely loyal (Sounds crashed and burned in 1991, Melody Maker and NME later amalgamated). This show is a reminder of how much has changed.

There are always those faces to which the camera warms. Here one of the stars is Edwyn Collins, exuding clean-cut youth and canny nonchalance. One of the most interesting shots here shows the band in a café in front of a mural of some faux Italian town, young boys peering out from under their fringes. Collins is the one looking right at you, with the hint of a smile, as if he already knows what all this is about, and not even the fact that he’s wearing sandals and socks can dint his unshakable cool.

Another star is The Associates’ Billy Mackenzie. One early shot captures him tying his shoes, looking up like a guilty schoolboy. Within a handful of years, he’s morphed into a rock star, in a tight white vest, big sunglasses and that iconic cap. The story of that image forming is played out in Papadopolous’ photographs. Shortlived Glasgow band The Dreamboys, snapped at the Third Eye Centre in 1980, has a young Peter Capaldi on lead vocals in a knitted tank top, and Craig Ferguson on drums. One can’t help but play “where are they now?” Mackenzie is dead. Capaldi is an actor, best known as evil spin doctor Malcolm Tucker. Ferguson is hosting The Late Late Show in LA. Collins, who went on to marry Papadopoulos’ flatmate Grace Maxwell (owner of the scooter) suffered a brain haemorrhage in 2005, but has made a successful return to the stage.

It is frustrating that so few of the images in the show are dated, or say where they were taken (though music anoraks will enjoy spotting some of the venues from the scant interior detail). Some of the most interesting shots are those anchored to a moment: Jimmy Somerville, Tom Robinson and Andy Bell marching for gay rights; the 1980 Loch Lomond Festival, which featured battles between Mods and Skinheads.

What do we learn about the kind of photographer Harry Papadopoulos was? He liked unusual angles, particularly photographing towards the ceiling, or down on upturned faces. There is a tendency to take live shots from the side, though this might have been from necessity rather than choice. He was good at improvising with locations: there was a very successful impromptu shoot with The Bluebells in a vintage car showroom, and if no other option presented itself, he’d shoot a band in their mum’s back garden with impressive results.

What comes across most is that this is a showcase of a working press photographer. In general, Papadopoulos wasn’t looking for the unguarded moment on the tour bus, or the iconic portrait which would live in the memory, he was doing what music photographers do: trying your best to shoot well in crowded, sweaty concert halls and finding interesting ways of photographing groups of young men standing about looking cool.

Most of the photographs here don’t transcend that, but that’s not a failing. They are a valuable record of a musical moment in time, a time in which a bunch of young Scottish bands took on the world.

RATING: ****

• Until 25 February

Review: What Presence! The Rock Photography of Harry Papadopoulos - Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow