The Gift of Time, (10 x 8, b/w)
or
Secret histories documenting the ancient and modern tropes of contemporary Scottish culture including but not exclusively limited to the prehistoric, Neolithic,
contemporary and futuristic tribes.
Ross Sinclair

Imagine you are living in the late 1970s. Let’s settle on 1978 for argument’s sake. Computers don’t exist. Digital culture is simply science fiction. The world wide web is just a nightmare in the fevered imagination of the arachnophobe. Jim Callaghan leads a popular Labour Government. This is about to change. Soon there will be a new kind of politician in 10 Downing Street; Scotland shudders. The first fixed and failed devolution referendum is still a year away.

‘We’re on the march wi’ Ally’s Army –we’re going to the Argentine – and we’ll really shake them up when we win the world cup – ‘cause Scotland are the greatest football team...’ blasts out of every tinny radio of this small damp northern European nation as it wends its way to the inevitable failure in the 1978 World Cup. Glorious failure blossoms all summer, lasting longer than the pansies in Kelvingrove Park. Punk rock has just arrived in the suburbs, a year or so too late. And of course everything is still
in black and white. You get the picture.

Glaswegian Trompe l’Oeil

So, around about this time, across the road from the University Café on Byres Road, in the West End of Glasgow, a yellowing, typewritten postcard is seen in the window of Bensons paper shop. It nestles amongst the many other cards advertising bedsits for rent in Hillhead (Athole Gardens, top floor, £12 p/w), mundane jobs washing dishes in Back Alley (£1.10 p/h) and hipster garage bands seeking new drummers (influences: The Velvet Underground, The Byrds, Subway Sect, no heavy metal, no prog rock). The postcard reads something like this:

Photographer required for important job, Glasgow Area. Must be located in this place, live here, stay around, be present, keep eyes and ears open, be part of the scene, respond to the melodies of the city, witness the crazy dreamers and show their schemes. Will navigate the exploding art world, pop up at the seminal moments in the cultural development of the city, take pictures to explain these things; build relationships with people, help artists make their work, operate under the radar. Will not become the story, just be a part of the jigsaw, the civic tapestry, build a vivid archive that pictures a series of particular and dynamic moments and the people that make them. Won’t make pictures just for money, for newspapers, should keep it real, look after the negatives, be ready for the future that will come faster than you think. Duration: Minimum 40 years. Enquire within.

Alan Dimmick steps inside. And so it begins. 

A Lifetime of Love

The tail end of The Seventies - The Eighties – The Nineties –The Noughties –The Twenty-First Century rolls around... people and their places; bands and their audiences; artists and their different scenes come and go, ebb and flow. Slowly this place changes, someone from Switzerland says it’s a miracle that No Mean City has changed to Top Art Town. Well, maybe, but then Nathan Coley said, There Will Be No Miracles Here. Who can we trust? Where does the truth reside? Where can we see the evidence? It’s a standoff. People from history will say – how did all this sophisticated art and this sublime music come out of this terrible place, these unlikely people, on the outside of everything? If you look carefully at the photographs of Alan Dimmick, you can catch a glimpse of the answer, simple and complicated at the same time. It’s an image showing an intense and knowing look between two people, unselfconscious, infused with laughter and love. In a place where there is nothing to lose, there is everything to gain. Let’s make it happen. Lets meet tomorrow when we are sober and begin the task. And suddenly it’s decades later. How did that happen? Well, easy, you just put your eye to the viewfinder, survey the scene, put your finger on the shutter release, pull back and time has passed. And that’s how it grows, shot by shot, night by night, conversation by conversation, organically, informally.

This is how we find the accumulated evidence of those selected memories collected together, reflected through the archive of Dimmick, and we can begin to understand the history and geography of the place in more depth and detail. These are the moments caught in between the architecture of history. This story is made possible because the photographer never leaves.

The Eye of Dimmick: Being There

Martin Boyce once said, This Place is Dreaming and it’s true. Those people, this place - the textures of everyday life, a tapestry
of folk - art - folk - music, just folk. Why does it look like they are all doing something interesting? That something is about to happen? These pictures are one way to capture the music of life, the subtle tones, the complicated chords, the very particular timbre of a place and its inhabitants. These are the moments of greatest triumph, but we also bear witness to the everyday hopes and fears, capture that look before it goes mainstream. This is what Dimmick does. People are living and they are captured in analogue amber through his lens, like a cosmic magic trick that will take decades to unfold.

Some Kind of History in the Making

Alan Dimmick has been taking photographs of people since the late 1970’s. So when we look at them now we see two pictures contained in a single image – the then picture - brand new, innocent, a 10 x 8, b/w, just out of the fix tray - hanging on a line in the darkroom. Julie Wardlaw in front of the gas fire one minute, down the coast in a headscarf the next. Daniel and Alasdair Dimmick as babies. But of course we also see the now picture.

On the face of it the now version of the picture looks the same, it’s the same image. But you understand it’s completely different because it also includes all the years in-between the time it was made and now - it could be ten years, twenty years, thirty years, forty years and so on. You scan those years quickly - but for some folk that’s a lifetime. The pictures change because this time changes the people. They live, they hope, they try, they succeed, they fail, they live, they die, they disappear. I guess that’s how photographs always work but it can still be shocking to witness it all at once. The personal photographer of your own backyard. It’s not a family scrapbook, but it shows a variety of extended families, woven together in space and time. This is anthropology in action: unseen images of northern tribes, a people, their place, the relationships between people and time; and this place is dreaming. It always was, and it always will be. That’s why artists and musicians and writers and designers keep on coming and keep on staying. And keep on making it richer and more diverse and more attractive - a virtuous cycle.

Tenements and Testaments

So lets continue to imagine a city had the inspirational idea to set this commission. Perhaps forty years ago. And if they had it might have looked something like this book you’re holding in your hand. This is only my take on it. There are thousands of different journeys reflected here. Your reaction will have a different shape depending on where you passed those decades, here, or there, and if you know any of the folk in the pictures or if you just see it anew - fresh, objective. So let’s celebrate this place, these folk, the hopes, fears and lives led to the full. If you had seen that postcard in that window 40 years ago and taken on the challenge I wonder how it would have looked? Different. Of course. But this is Alan Dimmick’s version of events. And let’s celebrate the fact that this body of work is still going strong, yesterday, today and tomorrow.