Photographer Colin Templeton captures Glasgow’s uneasy transformation—where past and progress collide, and the city’s soul fights to endure.
Glasgow has always been a city of contradictions—grit and grandeur, decline and regeneration, defiance and despair. Once the industrial heartbeat of Britain, its shipyards and factories powered an empire, its tenements packed with workers who made the city hum. But as industry collapsed, so too did the livelihoods of thousands. In its wake came economic hardship, social unrest, and an enduring sense of struggle that has defined Glasgow for generations.
Photographer Colin Templeton has been bearing witness to these changes.
“I’ve been a press photographer for the UK nationals for over 30 years. For seven of those years, I was a staff photographer with The Herald/Evening Times/The National—based in my home city of Glasgow. It’s been a privilege, and I’ve loved the job. But sometimes it’s nice to photograph for yourself, with no deadlines, or anyone else to please.”
Fifteen years ago, Colin made a decision that would shape his personal body of work. He started carrying a camera at all times, not for an assignment, but for himself. It happened to coincide with a period of stark transformation in Glasgow—the demolition of tower blocks and shipyard cranes, the closure of nightclubs, the gentrification of pubs, and an explosion of graffiti across the city. By 2021, The Times had named Glasgow Britain’s most graffitied city.
“If I ever got to be an old guy, I’d like to look back on a body of work that meant something to me. So I started documenting the place. I’m trying to show a time of change, and I’ve intentionally shot it in black and white. The twin difficulties are knowing when to say that the project is finished, and what to leave out.”
His images are a raw and unfiltered account of a city in transition. The skeletal remains of demolished tower blocks, the streets scrawled with tags and murals, the hollowed-out clubs that once pulsed with life. They capture the reality that renewal does not come for all—poverty, addiction, and unemployment remain embedded in the city’s landscape, just as much as the glossy new developments rising in their place.
Glasgow’s spirit is one of survival. In the face of hardship, its people endure with a raw, gallus humour that refuses to be extinguished. But beneath the defiance, the reality lingers—this is a city where many still struggle, where prosperity remains unevenly distributed, and where change is often felt more as displacement than renewal.
Colin Templeton’s photographs do more than document a shifting skyline. They remind us that behind every demolition and development, there are lives being reshaped. This is not just a story of a changing city—it is a story of those who remain to tell it.
Colin has worked as a press photographer for the national newspapers in Scotland since 1994; he considers it just the best job. When he’s not at work, he still goes out with a camera and photographs the world around him. He considers it a gift to be able to photograph anything he likes, with no deadlines or pressure.
Colin Templeton’s project reveals the quiet beauty of a sprawling 1960’s brutalist housing estate in North Glasgow, known locally as The Barracks.
Photographer Steve Korn’s spontaneous duet of vision and movement—where jazz met photography, and artistry spoke without words.
Photographer Daniel Keys captures the fleeting connections of friendship, identity, and place in a changing London.
Anarchy in the Andes – Potosi Inka’s gather in Macha for the annual Tinku festival to worship Pachamama – the mother earth.
Photographer Steve Korn’s beautiful portraiture that allows us to realise we are all the same, all individuals.
