Harry Papadopoulos

Even if you haven’t heard of Harry Papadopoulos, chances are you’ll have seen some of his stunning music photography from the 1970s and 1980s. A career retrospective comes to Glasgow on 17 Dec.

Glasgow’s Street Level Photoworks are holding an exhibition featuring a selection of his influential photography called What Presence! The Rock Photography of Harry Papadopoulos between 17 Dec 2011 – 25 Feb 2012 and we can’t wait to see it.

Name a credible and significant band or artist from the late 1970s and early 1980s and they will, most probably, feature in this exhibition – Suicide, Bowie, Devo, Blondie, The Specials, The Birthday Party, The Clash, ABC, The Associates, Joy Division, Orange Juice, The Cramps… they’ve all been the subjects of Scotland’s other great photographer called Harry – not, of course, to be mistaken with Harry Benson.

Harry’s body of work, predominantly of pioneering post punk bands and new wave artists in the UK for magazines like Sounds, capture the style of an era like no other photographer of those years.

He began taking snaps as an amateur inside and outside some of the legendary Glasgow venues of

the 60s and 70s before moving to London to begin working for Sounds, where he was a staff photographer between 1979 and 1984.

At that time, the photographer’s London flat also became home and hang out to fellow Scots in the UK capital like Orange Juice, Aztec Camera, Josef K and The Bluebells. So in this exhibition of, many never before seen, photographs, we get the chance to see candid and off-the-cuff pictures of those acts and artists at home, so to speak, as well as more ‘professional’ and composed shots of bands and artists for the Sounds mag.

A series of talks and musical events will accompany the exhibition featuring the likes of exhibition co-curator Ken McCluskey of The Bluebells, Davie Henderson of the Fire Engines and Win; Creeping Bent Organisation’s Douglas McIntyre and Belle And Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch.

Keep an eye on Racket Racket for an interview with Ken McCluskey, without whom this exhibition would never have seen the light of day, about how the whole thing came about in the near future.

More information can be had about this exhibition on the Street Level Photoworks website.