An exhibition of black and white photographs by Norman McBeath with text by Janice Galloway marking the centenary of the birth of Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908 – 2004).
 
These photographs, taken in cities such as Paris, New York, Seville, Palermo, Venice, London and Edinburgh reveal what such places have in common – the sense of the unexpected and the bizarre, the unexplained and the unexplainable, the ordinary and the extraordinary.
 
Introduction
Text by Janice Galloway
 
Nothing is strange. And everything is. I hold these truths, in tandem, to be self-evident, especially when it comes to that bastion of teeming, neurotic human overload we call the city.
 
I like cities and was a resident of the indisputably bustling metropolis of Glasgow for a number of years. Originally a sea-side small-town girl from Ayrshire, my early-teenage self found life in Saltcoats tedious beyond that which one might be reasonably expected to endure. There was the shore, two patches of common green with swings and a roundabout, one decent Italian café, several schools, the railway line and the none-too-salubrious shops. For excitement, I read books and observed the fairly explicit weirdness of my own family: I did not observe the town. All the same, hordes of holidaymakers from Glasgow arrived every year at our railway station and headed for the sand dunes and rushes beyond the concrete prom wall that marked the shore front. With the exception of the Winton Road landladies, waitresses at the chippie and Veronica (the owner of Veronica’s newsagent, whose green mesh fishing nets, buckets and spades were favourites with the tourists), us locals more often than not kept out of the way of the city-folk, staying distant while they sat on our beaches in the rain. Sometimes you’d see them gathering rubbery anemones on treacherous rocks or strolling arm-in-arm in howling summer gales, laughing at the dreadful weather. They chucked chips skyward for hovering gulls and did other things that locals would not have done since they seemed so - well - pointless. In brief, the incomers saw more to enjoy in our town than we did. Whether this was the result of unfamiliarity, being less buttoned-up or being determined two enjoy their sole fortnight’s break from work didn’t matter. What mattered was the encounter with this different perspective. Our staid little seaside community was not just ours, and not just one thing. Fresh eyes made the same place different.
 
That the commonplace is often anything but is something of which a child is sure. We lose that certitude in our teens when the approaching, encroaching adult world comes a little too close for comfort, making us reactionary, self-conscious, dismissive in our own defence. I recall with great fondness a day when my teen cynicism was rendered helpless by a local drunk/down-and-out called Fearless, who, with no warning and less compunction, fought a liver and white mongrel in Dockhead Street for "looking at him funny". I saw the whole thing in the reflection of a shop window and didn’t even have to turn round. It was frightening, then bizarre, and finally hilarious. (The dog, I should add, made a quick exit after a few cursory, confused growls.) My mother’s first reaction was rage (who did Fearless think he was, starting fights?) then anxiety (did he need a doctor, an optician, a psychiatrist?) then pity (the man was friendless) tilting towards sly relish (you’ll never guess) when the time came to tell the story afresh. My sister, who had seen nothing of the incident, pronounced the whole piece of theatre merely stupid. Maybe something about my mother’s telling was lacking. Maybe my sister’s ability to picture was lacking. Maybe what was needed to give her a share in the moment  - and the sense of wonder it gave the rest of us - was a photograph. I was lucky after all: I was there.
 
That odd little happenstance, however fleeting, taught me two things: a) what passes for normal is relative and b) what it means is open to free interpretation. The tale of Fearless and the Dog was not allowed to remain completely open-ended, of course. Like a ballad, the story was embroidered, repeated and absorbed as local lore. Perhaps it is that towns, by dint of the shared fate and relative stasis of their inhabitants, require to contain and classify. Cities, by dint of their greater and more fluid population, allow a better chance of escape from codification. This can make cities seem uncaring, depersonalised places. It also makes them places unparalleled in human diversity and show.
 
When I finally moved to a city myself (Glasgow, and not till my late twenties) a degree of inexplicability in daily life was something expected. More surprising was the sheer breadth of variousness on offer, the layers and multiple juxtapositions on tap. I recall in particular a chap of about fifty in full slap, Capri-pants and high heels on Glasgow’s tiny tube service drawing less attention than the kitten in a mock-croc handbag on his lap. People cooed or ignored the man and his pet completely. One girl, on her lunch hour from Boots by her name-badge, complemented the chap on his choice of nail colour. The moment, as I saw it, was complete.
 
Engagement with such encounters fosters our empathy. It encourages contemplation rather than judgement and lends us greater courage for the task of living. Keeping the eye fresh enough to catch these moments, however, is not easy. Fortunately, there are creative artists out there whose willing to lend theirs is our great good fortune.
 
The photographic art of Norman McBeath unveils the otherwise missable or fleeting. The context for the work shown here is cities, the great and grand capitals of Paris, New York, London, Athens, Berlin, Edinburgh among them. The photographs themselves showcase a startling array of split-second moments, his sense of wonder at the diversity of life apparent in every shot. If there is beauty in these pictures, there is beauty, but beauty is not the point. The point is the random drama the city effortlessly engenders, the scatter of single droplets he spots amid the torrent. Every one of the pictures in this exhibition contains at least one story. All are ripe for telling.
 
A figure looks out from inside a see-through box, resembling nothing so much as a Barbie doll awaiting Christmas wrapping. Yet the figure  is a trained professional, a man in uniform and an array of authoritative badges of office, his gun poking out at hip-height. A cable, an ugly socket plugs the box to the building behind. Electrified, with as little privacy as an eel in an aquarium, he’s pitilessly ours. Elsewhere, a tiny boy in a park full of pared-back trees, eyes the possibility of football through the slits of a super-hero mask. His lips push out through the cloth as though he is about to speak. Further afield, two neighbours swap stories in an unnaturally clean piazza, ignoring a sinister collection of black bags, a man with a briefcase slipping out of sight into the welter of Venetian side-streets.
 
Here is a slim figure - the madonna? a discarded bride from a wedding cake? a prop for a magician’s trick? - shrouded in silk, awaiting transformation or at least the moment juste to appear; here is a couturier’s window, extravagantly smashed, its damage resembling a giant cobweb beyond which one sees nothing but a sleeve for sale; here is a carnival lion, more used to travelling in circles, harnessed to a pick-up for transportation in a New York alleyway.
 
McBeath’s images jostle, suggest competing interpretations, bring evocations to the surface that pop and melt like bubbles. Within them, nothing is strange. And everything is. QED. The complexity of what we sloppily call "everyday life" is no secret, yet it’s seldom taken this seriously, its counterpoints made central, not just a quirky backdrop to a more cleanly-interpreted foreground. This rich black and white gallery permits the reframing of the stage set we walk through every day, helping us grasp the full remarkableness of the ordinary.
 
© Janice Galloway, 2008 (Used with permission)
 
Norman McBeath
 
Norman McBeath is an independent photographer, based in Edinburgh, Scotland. His work focuses on people and places. The National Portrait Galleries in Edinburgh and London have fifty of his portraits in their permanent collections.
 
Recent work has been exhibited as part of exhibitions at the Leica Gallery in New York, the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh and the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
 
His last solo exhibition, Oxford at Night, was at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford with an introduction by Jeanette Winterson – the first exhibition by a living photographer in the museum’s history.
 
Janice Galloway
 
Janice Galloway is one of Britain’s most celebrated and admired novelists. Her first novel, The Trick is to Keep Breathing, is regarded as a Scottish contemporary classic. Foreign Parts, her second novel won the McVitie Prize and her third, Clara, won the Saltire Award. Her latest book, This is Not About Me, was published by Granta in September 2008.