An interview with Henry Bell for Gutter magazine https://www.guttermag.co.uk/about

Angela Catlin is a photographer and photo-journalist based in Glasgow. She has been described as one of the most gifted and experienced photographers in the world and has won numerous awards for her photography including Feature Photographer of the Year at the UK National Picture Editor Awards and Scottish Photographer of the Year on two occasions.

Angela has worked in places such as Rwanda, Gaza, Guatemala, Haiti and Columbia. Working with Journalist Billy Briggs she won Amnesty International’s Scottish Media Award and was the British winner of the European Union Journalist Award in 2007. Her focus is often on human rights and global injustice, but she is known also for two books of portraits made thirty years apart, Natural Light (1985) and Natural Light II (2016), which bring together pictures of Scotland’s best known writers.

G: Can you tell us a bit about how you became a photographer, and where this project, Natural Light, came from?

A: Wow, gee whizz. Well, I worked as a painter and decorator for Craigmillar Festival Society. There were two teams, a NIT team – Neighbourhood Improvement Team – and a CAT team – Community Arts Team – and I remember mum was working in the information office at the Craigmillar Festival Society and she did not want me to apply for a job there. She just wanted me getting a proper job. I had tried for the police, I was a police cadet for six months, I didn’t like the strait-jacket of the uniform, as soon as you walked outside, you were on call. I was just a cadet and people would take the piss, ask me stupid questions, stuff like that. It was just embarrassing, and at the point there was no trousers, just a skirt, and I felt a bit vulnerable, wearing this uniform. And it was Craigmillar don’t forget, Greendykes. So anyway, I lasted about six months. Couple of dead bodies too many. Which in retrospect I shouldn’t probably have been at the scene of. Funnily enough I went back with these stories to my brother, who then made a career in the police. I used to tell him what was going on at the end of the day and he got more and more interested. Well, I chucked it, and he joined.   So, I was part of this neighbourhood improvement scheme, as a painter and decorator, did that for about a year and had a wacko time. Just doing up old folks homes, and folk who couldn’t afford it, there was a gaffer, two guys and me, and I just really enjoyed doing it. Then after a year a job came up as a photographer’s assistant, and someone said to me, ‘you apply for that photographers job’ and I was like that, I’ve never taken a photograph really, all I’ve got’s my Instamatic that I got for my 15th birthday. And they said ‘it’s ok, you don’t need to have had any experience.’ But I’m not even visual you know. But I went for the interview and had to sneak in and out past mum. Afterwards, councillor Davie Brown said to my mum ‘tell Angie she got the job.’ And she went ‘What job! What’s she doing.’ So that was me, I was on the CAT team, Community Arts team, and I was assistant photographer to John Brown. He taught me everything, much better than any photography course could or would. He was just so generous with his teaching. But I couldn’t get the light thing at all. He’d say to me ‘that light’s so wonderful’ and ‘that light’s just perfect,’ and I wasn’t getting it at all, I couldn’t see what he was talking about. And then – this was five months in – I was going in on the bus, just near Duddingston Loch and the sun was just coming up, and there was this early morning light, and I saw it, and that was it. I saw it, I saw the light, and that was me for the next thirty years. I think that’s what established my love of looking at light, working with natural light, light that’s god given, rather than artificial.

G: So did you then see it as a way for you to become a journalist, or did you want to be an artist, or a commercial photographer?

A: At that point I wanted to do portraits of everybody. Scottish Writers, Scottish everybody, whatever. So I approached the Arts Council with the idea of a book of portraits, but they said it was too wide a spectrum, just choose one focus. And they didn’t know my work or what I could do, you know I didn’t have any work. So, I got six portraits together and then they gave me the grant. And I was over the moon. And I got to travel the length and breadth of the UK, just doing portraits, I did all in 2¼ format and it was all natural light.

G: So Natural Light was your first piece of work then.

A: Yeah, but after I finished that I didn’t see myself going down the portrait line, there just wasn’t that kind of work available. And I really wanted to work in newspapers. I’d just been doing little jobs. I remember a shift in a Chinese restaurant by the Grosvenor, on Ashton Lane, and I had talked them into giving me a trial at lunch time, they give me a big basin of prawns to shell and I failed miserably, so they gave me a free lunch and told me that I wasn’t a very good Chinese cook. I walked out of there and there were two phone boxes just on the Byres Rd and I went into one and phoned the picture desk of The Glasgow Herald. It was the assistant editor and I was really so nervous, but I thought I am just gonna try it, and they said ‘yeah ok, he’s not here today, come in tomorrow and we’ll have a chat.’ So, I went in and I had Natural Light by then, and at first they were giving me arts and portrait work, not really journalism stories. There was one weekend and I had done a picture of this artist. Stephen Campbell And I hadn’t heard and I hadn’t heard, and I thought ach the picture must have been rubbish, I’ll never get used again. And I was waiting for my brother on the Saturday morning in a roll shop on Exchange Square and there was papers, so I opened The Herald. Back then the arts pull out was broadsheet size, full page, and my portrait was the full length of the paper. I was over the moon. So Monday morning I went up and asked is there any more work? I thought you know, it was worth a try. Unfortunateley, (for Stuart, not me) one of the staff photographers, had had a heart attack. It was a sort of being in the right place at the right time. So they said, go down to the local community farm they’ve got this new animal in the petting farm or something similar. They’d give me these little jobs. And that was my apprenticeship really. The more they saw I was capable of, the more they gave me, and I just sneaked up the scale of the job. So that when I was introduced to news stories I was ready, and I ended up getting away from the portraits to photojournalism, and I went from freelance to staff at The Herald.

G: And was that where you wanted to be then? Was the book a stepping stone to the photo journalism?

A: No. I didn’t have a clue what I was gonna do. I just had this thing that I didn’t know what the opportunities were. Now I would, but then I just had this idea of getting my pictures into the papers, doing that. I had a good few years, won Scottish photographer of the year twice. At that stage I think I was the only female news photographer apart from Leslie in Fife. I felt a bit claustrophobic in the newspapers though, even though I was enjoying it. And in my own time I was doing work for the magazine, The Herald Magazine, which could have sold on the shelves by itself I always thought, it was great. Great picture editor, great editor. And so I just started generating stories for them, and I would find a like-minded journalist who was interested in doing the words. And we’d go off and do whatever it was and that’s how I actually ended up working with Billy Briggs. We both left The Herald at the same time and we were both interested in human rights and social issues, and we’d been doing those kind of jobs together and we kept on doing that. But then, there was a bit of a hiatus for me later. We’ll not bother about it in this interview. But, when I came back from the Tsunami, I was very ill for a while. After that I didn’t think I’d be taking pictures ever again to tell you the truth. I just, I had total fatigue. However it left me, I just felt drained: couldn’t hardly move one foot in front of the other, sleeping twenty four hours. But one way or another, I got back on track. Maybe nine months down the line. And I was lucky, cos I had support from The Herald Magazine, they would give me small jobs. At first I’d ask ‘is there gonna be anyone else there’ I was totally terrified; it was like rebuilding yourself all over again, from ground zero. Anyway, I wouldn’t be able to do that in any other circumstance. Just with the help of friends I got myself back together again. And then, I was back. But I guess I wasn’t quite back. I remember me and Billy going to Guatemala to do a story about violence against women, femicide. And I was absolutely drained; when we weren’t working I was sleeping. So, it was slow but I was on the road.

G: Off to Gaza?

A: That’s right yeah, it was already under siege. There was nothing going in or out, people weren’t going in or out. Medical supplies weren’t going in. It was a daily struggle for the Gazan people. So basically we were going out to cover the story and the difficulties they were facing. And we met some amazing people. There’s a million and a half Gazans living in a prison, it’s just like they are being squeezed dry, physically, mentally, emotionally, everything. We met fishermen who had lost limbs for fishing just outside the designated waters, cos the Israelis had restricted where they could work, which was hardly any area at all. And if they dared to go out of that area the Israeli gunboats would just open fire. The water was pretty polluted near Gaza, and it was forcing the fisherman to go out further, but then they were running the gauntlet of gunfire. And the medical issues as well, kids getting treated for survivable complaints, but never surviving because they weren’t getting access to the care they needed. This has always been quite close to me actually, man’s inhumanity to man. What they’ve been through, the West Bank as well. It’s all going on under the radar right now. It’s all still happening on a daily basis, but other things have overtaken it. I saw a story the other day, from the West Bank, where they are knocking down the houses of Palestinian families, that have been there for centuries, and the Bedouin as well, and if they don’t knock down their homes themselves, they would have to pay money to the Israelis to knock it down. It’s just the worst treatment; beyond belief to me. I’d like to get back out there actually, cover that story more.

G: What do you think your photos are doing in these two contexts, the portraits and the journalism?

A: It’s telling a story about the person. I think that’s it. The first book, the first Natural Light was much tighter, the portraits were tighter, you know. This time I wanted them to breathe, I think having been in journalism and looking at the wider picture, and seeing more of a story, it informed things. So this time I wanted to create a bit more environment around them, let the subject breathe a bit. There’s some I have gone in more map of the face, but not so many. More are urban landscape/ environmental portrait.

G: And do you think you have to give something of yourself to it? Are you telling the story, directing the narrative, or is the story there, be it James Robertson or Gaza, and you’re just uncovering it.   A: No, I’m not directing it. Ok, I’ve got my views, but I still have to be objective, and tell both sides. It’s balanced, but it just happens, you can’t not see what’s going on, so often you can see whether somebody is lying: whether the story is true or not.

G: So you’re an observer?

Ac I like to turn up about half an hour to forty minutes before and have a good scope around and see what would make for a good backdrop. Sometimes I didn’t get the chance – like with Alasdair Gray – I think I was in and out in fifteen minutes [laughs] but at other times I would just stay as long as it was needed. It worked anyway: whether I stayed fifteen minutes or I stayed a couple of hours, I had what I wanted when I left.

G: Is there any portrait in the books that you think the context – the landscape – of it is particularly important to you?

A: I think Douglas Dunn [in a rolling field of stubble and round straw bales]. I felt that reflected his work. And we were chasing the light that day – the sun was going down and because we’d spent time chatting we had to jump in my car, and race against the dying of the winters light. I worked during winter light, from October to March, so the light was going down at about half-three or four and not only were we still looking for my backdrop but we had to get it before the sun totally disappeared and changed the whole picture. So as soon as I saw it I just ran the car into the field, and Douglas ran over to the bales, we didn’t have long to do it, but as soon as I saw it that was just so lucky, so lucky. The light was just perfect and it worked. And there are pictures like Alan Bissett’s. His picture is at Grangemouth, where he grew up, in its shadow, so there is a bit of that story in the picture. And Ronald Frame’s a big Italian film fan – Fellini and so on – so underneath the M8 suited that urban landscape feel of his Glasgow. And Alasdair was just needs must. When I got in touch with him – I was so pleased he said yes and agreed to it – and he said ‘But I remember thirty years ago you didn’t spend very long taking the picture, could you do that again?’ And I said yes, no problem, and then when I turned up he’d forgotten I was going to be turning up at all, he wasn’t in, and I’d gone off again, but fortunately I was still in the West End [of Glasgow], down in Fopp, when I got a call back. Alasdair was home so I went back up the road and he was working away at the window. I’d just got my jacket off and Morag made me a cup of tea, Alasdair had moved over to his desk and it was just lovely, the light at the window, he had illustrations that he was working on for a book, so I just said if you could just carry on with your work Alasdair, forget I’m here – not knowing that he would forget that I was there – and so I started doing some pictures of him just working away. And then I said ok, just glance up now, and he just said ‘You’re really distracting me here!’ [laughs] So I said it won’t take long, you know, so I took a couple of pictures where he sat, and the one that is on the cover [of Natural Light II] I went in closer, whereas the other one that is used inside the book is more of a journalist photograph, telling the story. But I must have been in and out in fifteen minutes – I had a promise to keep!

G: How was it photographing people thirty years apart? Did they feel like the same people? Jim Kelman for instance, had you seen him in the intervening years?

A: No, it’s amazing! That was the thing; it just felt that when you chapped the door and they opened it and it could’ve been last week! I mean, visually people have changed so much in that time, but it just felt very comfortable. I never felt uneasy at all. It was as if that thirty years had just melted away. It was quite amazing – as if there had been contact in the intervening years. Stewart Conn, Liz [Lochhead], Jim [Kelman]. Jim’s got grumpier in his old age (sorry about that, Jim). So I found that bit fascinating. I think there are maybe ten of the people from the original book in this one.

Quite often, if the writer decided where they’d like the picture to be taken I’d be led by them. I’d just let it go where it flowed and was also led by the writers . My very first writer was Christopher Brookmyre, and I had an idea that I’d photograph him at Love Street, as he’s a big St Mirren supporter. So he said, ‘Yeah, ok, that’s fine.’ But then he says, ‘But also I go walking down by Bothwell Castle trying to untangle lines and where I’m going, stuff like that.’ So I suggested what about if we do both then, one of you outside the stadium with your St Mirren scarf, and then we’ll go down to Bothwell Castle and he was dead right. He was dead right – that was the picture. Kirsty Logan wanted to go down to the beach at Culzean Castle which is lovely, because that meant something personal to her. I think mostly people were in their own environment, either at home or close to, but I would just be led by them. If they didn’t feel strongly about where they wanted their picture taken that was fine as well, but it was a very flexible situation – I just let it go where it wanted. And whatever the light was on the day, that’s what it was as well, so there was no failure as such; it was whatever it was, wherever it went, whatever the circumstance, whatever the light was there. And there wasn’t one where I thought I wish I’d done it this way, or that the light was rubbish – it all worked out. In fact I was really lucky, that winter was one of the driest we’ve ever had, so I think it was only a couple where it was actually raining out of, what, 56 people? It was quite incredible. And that light again! I was photographing late morning or early afternoon, and it was just really good. I mean I couldn’t have done it this winter – it was just so wet! [chuckles] Well, of course i could have, but it was easier with no rain, and that light.

G: Did you worry about people not liking their portraits, or does that not matter too much to you?

A: Hmmm. I wanted the people to like them ok, because they’ll have to look at it for quite a long time! [laughs] But I just shot it the way how I instinctively felt. There was no kind of ‘well they would look better this side or–’ I just didn’t think about that. And I think that works for it. If you are comfortable with the person that reflects as well, and there wasn’t anybody that I didn’t get on with. I think I’ve got used to dipping in and out of people’s lives. It’s the same in photojournalism. Going off and doing a story, you are in people’s lives for short but quite vivid time. I don’t know how to describe that really. I mean, I always feel this when we’re working away, I think, god we go into these people’s lives just for that short time, and we can leave it, we go back, but they are still there, and that... sometimes it grates a bit, you know? Of course I’m trying to tell a story, I’m trying to raise awareness about whatever situation, but I don’t want to feel like I’ve used people at all. In fact, it was good when I did the Life after Iraq project – that was a refugee story. Most of the refugees had gone to Syria so Billy and I went to Damascus where thousands of the Iraqi refugees had gone – though now of course they will have had to have moved again – and we were comparing the situation, Syria at that point had taken about a million Iraqi refugee, and Glasgow had quite a few coming in at that point as well, so the Scottish Refugee Council commissioned Billy and I to go to Syria and do a story on the hardships and the daily life of being a refugee and what they were facing over there, and looking at what the parallels were with Glasgow. I’m still friendly with a family from that – that’s about eight years now and I was over seeing them the other day. They’re off and running now, you know, but I was involved in their lives for a long time. Because Hanna arrived just with the three kids, she was on her own, at that point – her husband wasn’t over yet – and so now I just feel like part of their family. I can just turn up and they are just so welcoming, and I really care about them. The mum was so protective about the kids. They lived in the Red Road flats, and she wouldn’t let them out of her sight. So I’d say that I’d take them – though I had to build up a trust as well, you know? So we’d just go and play football down at the pitches at Red Road, or take them swimming (the mum coming along) and then she kind of said ok – and Omar, who is 19 now, was really keen on football – so I got him into a wee team and then I started taking him to training or to the games, and the mobile would go maybe ten times during the game; it’s ok Hanna, I can still see him and he’s fine, he’s playing football and don’t worry he’ll be home soon. And then we’d be in the car and she’d be phoning, but that was just the legacy of the trauma that they’d experienced, especially Hanna, and what had happened over in Baghdad. That’s been satisfying and rewarding, so I feel I kind of readdress it a wee bit. I mean, I can’t do anything on a daily basis for the people in Gaza – I can’t adopt everybody, but I can do something here, and I’ve got another family that I met through the Freedom From Torture organisation [based down near the Gorbals] Billy and I were doing a feature about them, an exhibition, and I got quite close to Rana and Tehmina and the kids as well, so I’m really lucky – I’ve got two surrogate families. And I get well fed [laughs] it’s the only time I eat properly, when I’m over visiting one of them! And that’s fine. I feel happy about that, because I’ve given back a wee bit, I’m not just going into people’s lives and coming away again.

G: But is the act of going into people’s lives not helping?

A: I don’t really feel... I mean, they feel they are left behind or something. ‘What did I gain from that? I give these people’ – me or Billy or whoever – ‘I let them into my life and gave them my story.’ And we just take it away. What’s left? That’s what I feel. And that’s why having Hanna and Rana, families that I can give back a wee bit. So Hanna’s family, they’re fine. They’re adults mostly – Omar doesn’t need me to do the football run unfortunately [laughs] he can do it himself; I taught him to drive, so they’re all fine. And Ahmed the husband is over now as well. And another wee unexpected arrival. When I was over in Rome, at the British School, I came back and the kids were saying, ‘Do you notice anything different.’ and I was saying no she looks fine, putting on a bit of weight or something, and the kids were giggling and laughing, and it turns out she was pregnant. Adam is four now.

The British School was a big change. I think I was happily going along in my little photojournalism life, and when the British School came out of nowhere with this three month fellowship in Rome. That was just an eye-opener. It was fantastic, just mixing, you know, being with artists and the buzz that was created around the place; a twenty-four hour library, original Piranesis, a Caravaggio in every church(just about) and the culture of Rome – the life of the streets. I love life on the street, and at first my idea had been that I might do a people trafficking story, in Rome: girls coming from Nigeria into Burkina Faso, and then into Europe, Rome is quite a bit of a hub for people trafficking. But it really became apparent quickly that without the language I would just hit bureaucracy and red tape and I thought I can’t do this, or the three months are going to go like that [clicks fingers]. So I just thought right, ok, why I started photography was because I really loved Cartier Bresson’s street photography. I’m just going to spend my time doing street photography, and that’s what I did. And it was during that time that I thought, maybe it is time to revisit Natural Light. Creative Scotland were so supportive right from the off, and the late Gavin Wallace was so encouraging. I don’t think it would have happened if I didn’t have the British School at Rome experience. It was enlightening for me. And I remember saying I think you want somebody younger for this [laughs]. I mean why would they want me to do it – an old hack. But they did and I’m so glad, it was just the best ever, a fantastic experience, and it opened my eyes to the art world as well. It was like university and gap year – which I’d never had – all in one, rolled into three months. It was so intense. Really intense. I loved it.

G: And will you do any other art books? Anything else you want to focus on?

A: I’d like to. I’d love to do more portraits, like with Natural Light II. I was wondering, is there room for one on Scottish artists? I don’t know. And I’ve got a couple of ideas for reportage stories. I’ve always been interested in Native Americans and there was an artist called George Catlin – same surname as me – 200 years ago he went round different reservations. In the face of real danger, he visited reservations and documented their way of life and did portraits as well, so I find kind of an affinity with him somehow as well. I’d like to follow in his footsteps. So I’ve been doing a wee bit of research on him.

G: That might bring together the two things you’re talking about, in a way, the sort of human rights reportage and the…

A: Exactly. I don’t want to be all doom and gloom – that’s Billy and I’s name for each other – [laughs]. That’s our double act, ‘doom and gloom’. I don’t want it to be like that, cos we’ve had all that as well and I just think, let’s have a positive look at what’s happened to people…I know there’s such problems in the reservations but I wanted to have a rounded look and not be too negative. I mean there’ll have been thousands of people who have made a success of their lives as well. So, I quite fancy doing that. Again it’s reportage and portrait the same as what George Catlin did 200 years ago.

G: It’s a tacky question but do you have a favourite book photo where you’ve taken a photograph that means the most to you?

A: From the book?

G: Yeah either, both, from the book and from your career.

A: Yeah, I’ve never really thought about it. Oh…China! One in China. Yeah, I had gone out to China. I went out three times, this was my second visit before they were flooding the four hundred mile stretch of the Yangtze when they were building the Three Gorges Dam and I wanted to document life before the waters came and all signs of the China before disappeared, and just photograph it, a way of life that’s gone. So I was really the only European…I would never bump into anybody else white in the places I was going on these trips up the Yangtze river. I remember waiting one early morning for the boat and I just saw this tableaux in front of me of these different characters and it was amazing! It was like a moving painting and I just raised the camera – I had to keep my camera up for quite a while and then keep the one eye open just watching. The challenge was that I didn’t want anybody looking at the camera and it’s difficult there because I’m different, they want to look and wonder who I am, why I’m there. So I just stood still. I don’t know if there’s maybe 8 or 10 people in the picture, there might be one that maybe looks as if they’re looking at the camera but that’s my picture, I love that. Along with a Chinese miner, those are the only two pictures of mine I’ve got up on the wall. Just the setting, the people, the characters; it was a portrait of life on the Yangtze, that’s what it was. So I’d love to do something like that again and the Native American thing is as close to that as I can think of. There’s another dam I think in South America somewhere that’s gonna be built and that’s gonna cause possibly all sorts of problems for indigenous people losing land again, so I think – how many people were displaced – maybe a million people were displaced along that stretch in China, and the same thing would happen. So I was thinking about having a look at that story as well. I mean, the big environmental impact and the little people that have got no voice as usual.

G: But first you’ve got Natural Light II to launch. What do you think people are looking for in those portraits?

A: To see the person behind the words. A lot of people won’t have an idea of what Ali Smith looks like or Alison Kennedy or Denise Mina or Louise Welsh, so I think they’re interested, it’s just curiosity. Seeing the person behind the words just adds another dimension doesn’t it, to what they’re reading. That’s what fascinates me as well cos I’m not very good at using words, I’m not, y’know, word friendly. I love reading but I’m not very good at using them and I think maybe that’s why I was drawn to photographing writers. Trying to understand a wee bit more how they use these words.

G: But you’re a storyteller as well. Not just as a photographer.

A: Me?

G: Yeah.

A. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Telling a story. [long pause] I’m just thinking, that would make a nice portrait view [laughs, gestures]. Just where you are there and the kind of luminous lights off to one side and just…that’s excellent. Shame there’s no a photographer in the room!

But yeah I’m just kinda…words faze me. All the words, they’ve been used. It’s like stepping on a crack in the pavement, y’know, when you were a kid and you were trying to avoid stepping on the cracks. It’s like how do you avoid using the same word? How do you change words into a different story? The same words! It absolutely fascinates me. I know it’s so simple and straightforward and obvious but how can they use all these same words and come out with totally different stories? I wanted to see these people that can do that.

G: And was there any one of them that was an absolute fucking nightmare to photograph?

A: Alasdair! [raucous laughter]. No, he wasn’t really, just carnaptious! He just wanted to get on with his work [laughs]. I think he thought I’d just kinda snuck in off the street and appeared in front of him!

G: I would’ve thought one of the grand old men, MacKay Brown or McCaig or someone might have been difficult.

A: No. I was kind of in awe of them – as with Alasdair, still, thirty years later – y’know? Just being in their presence and Sorely McLean, as you said, George MacKay Brown, Ian Crichton Smith, Edwin Morgan, Norman McCaig, they were just all, just really good guys.

G: I think I said before the McKay Brown picture is my absolute favourite just because he’s this wild Orcadian figure in this little hallway in this very suburban looking setting.

A: I know, well the thing is that’s right, because I went all the way to Orkney and I photographed him in a porch. Well I was nervous as you say, but I can’t get over that. What was I thinking about? Why wasn’t he kind of striding out across the beaches or the dunes or whatever in Orkney with a landscape backdrop! But for some reason, known not even to me, I did the picture there. And again Sorely McLean, I photographed him on Raasay. Why is he not out in the landscape? And I have no idea, I’ve no idea, but now with my experience for thirty years in between in newspapers and doing photo-journalism and telling stories, I think, made these portraits very different from the first.

G: I think they are different but I think that McLean or McKay Brown in a domestic setting tells a story too though. Because in a way you romanticise these particularly ‘island’ poets with these big outdoor things, when really if you live on an island most of your time is spent in a hallway or in a kitchen, you know, they’re not striding across dunes composing, their grafting, trying to write in their wee rooms.

A: Good point. Good point. Yeah! See you can use words better than me, but that’s right. I remember when I was photographing Jim Kelman. In fact when he saw his poem beside, I say it’s a poem, his observation beside his portrait in the first book was ‘same t-shirt, might’ve known’. And he had me convinced when I was doing his portrait thirty years later than that was his same t-shirt on the heater [laughs]. Honestly, I was nearly convinced. I asked Jim, can we do the photograph along by the canal, in Maryhill up in the area where he stays and he said, ‘Aww naw’, he wisnae having any of that, ‘we’ll just do it up in the study’. I think it was the same clock on the walls as the first picture thirty years before, y’know. So just being very open minded or whatever turns up, whatever happens in front of me, that’s what I love. I just love photographing or interpreting what’s happening in front. To be invisible, that’s a photographers greatest gift. To become invisible. That’s what I try to do when I’m doing photojournalism. But it always…I think there’s this kind of dropping in and out of people’s lives is what I do best. I was thinking about that the other day. I don’t hang about. I just…I just want a taste of people’s lives, I don’t want to live it [laughs].

© 2025

Angela Catlin