Vote Progressive

Published in ‘An Eye on the Street, Photographs by David Peat’ Renaissance Press 2012

I can’t remember who it was, but a photography teacher I once knew suggested that, within the context of a students’ critique, the first step in analysing a photograph, or series of photographs, might be to first describe, quite prosaically, what is in the picture.

This is relatively straightforward in this selection of David Peat’s work since there are so many common elements here: babies and children of course: boys with sticks and playful girls. There is only one solitary adult in the whole series. And then slums, demolition, broken windows, graffiti, detritus.

The second stage is to describe these elements and consider what they might represent; what the work is about.

We are shown decay and poverty certainly. But the work seems to be about community, resilience, innocence, cheerfulness and optimism.

Like all documentary photographs, they become more interesting and valuable with the passing of time. These images of the Gorbals and Maryhill are now almost half a century old and at the simplest level they tell us what people looked like then, how they dressed where they lived and – to an extent – how they lived. They are then, a piece of social history. They also invite conjecture about what the photograph can’t tell us. How did these kids feel about the life they lived? Where are they now and what are they doing?

David Peat is primarily a documentary film-maker who has continually made photographs in the street over the last few decades. To say that the pictures were made as an amateur is not to belittle them. When he began to exhibit his work some years ago it became clear that he has a very particular vision: a precise sense of frame and form certainly; a finely judged anticipation of ‘the moment’ definitely. These are the quintessential and unique skills of ‘straight’ photography. They are skills that can be fine-tuned with experience, but cannot be taught. Peat’s photographs have all the more authority as historical documents and superb exemplars of the art for not having been tinged with any computer interventions.

Peat displays a film-maker’s sensibilities to narrative and sequence. In one series of photographs, he moves from the general to the particular as he communicates the experience of encounter: of approaching grim and crumbling tenements to see two prams with babies entertaining each other in the apparent absence of adults. In another sequence a young boy takes his responsibilities seriously as he foregoes play – or has perhaps outgrown play – to set up his stall to sell oranges.

The sequence progresses to unpeopled urban decay: to demolition and the building of the notorious high rise flats that were to rehouse, with a ray of optimism, the people from the ‘slums’. Ironically these have now in turn been demolished.

These photographs were made for the purest of reasons – not for fame or remuneration, but from the pure and personal motivation of someone who exudes human empathy. This is at the heart of the work. See for yourself.