Nine photos from 2021

Happy new year!

I published a photo every day in 2021. Here are nine that I particularly like with some accompanying thoughts.

With the 2020 festive season cancelled due to a lockdown, we looked for more activities to do in the open air, so it was amazing to see Queen's Park pond freeze over at the beginning of January 2021. People were bemused by the novelty of a free outdoor ice rink, with children playing on (and damaging) a recently installed sculpture in the background.

Here, the abandoned office of design company, Graphical House, sits quietly absorbing the sunshine. I have been working from home for years, so the experience of lockdown has been seamless, but I like the idea of other people being in a hive of creativity. Hybrid working appears to be the future, but as a friend told me when he went into the office for the first time: a big office with three people in it is a bleak place.

My daily walk often takes me through George Square where the people of Glasgow come to make their voices heard. The secondary effects of the pandemic are becoming clearer with inflation worsening the quality of life for everyone. This photo shows the alienation in a society that doesn't look after the health of everyone in it.

This is probably my most serendipitous photo of the year: a chance merging of a greyhound and a child at the top of Arthur's seat. The photographer who has given me the most pleasure this year is Martin Parr. He has an uncanny ability to capture humanity in all their colourful situations. This is perhaps my most Parr-like photo.

This scene of Yotam and Sandra pretending to strangle each other with their hands covered in mulberry juice is the complete opposite of the previous photo and one of the rare times that I have attempted to direct my subjects. Sandra is a wonderful actor and Yotam shows willing, but what makes it compelling is that we aren't used to seeing violence depicted in our holiday snaps, especially not from a yoga holiday.

Despite all the forms, vaccinations, and tests, we managed to make it to Spain in the summer and enjoyed almost four weeks in Kia's yoga retreat at Las Chimeneas. Getting out of the city and withdrawing into the mountains is a transformative experience. All your anxiety and egotism dissolves, allowing you to commune with others in nature. This unposed photo of Roberta captures something of the acceptance, clarity and hope that I felt by the end of my stay.

Mass events are thrilling, especially after having been locked up for so long. The victory celebrations of the Rangers fans, thwarted from success for so long by financial irregularities and forced demotion to the third division, felt like a volcanic eruption. There was violence, drunkeness, malicious joy, but also a great pride and a sense of community. I love taking photos of people when they are proudly on display for all the world.

It remains to be seen whether the 2020s become another ‘roaring twenties’ full of hedonistic excess, but the feeling of going to a gig for the first time in two years was glorious. It helped that Scritti Politti sounded fantastic, allowing the audience to forget about all that virus stuff and just enjoy nodding their head to the music.

For the two weeks of COP26, Glasgow was the centre of the world. Before the talks got started, activists attempted to set the agenda by staging a procession through the city featuring indigenous people and enlivened by Walker and Bromwich's 15 metre long inflatable snake. The 'Serpent of Capitalism' was there to encourage people to think about the consequences of our economic system and how it consumes everything in its path.