Heading west along the southside of the Clyde, the A8 is at first a motorway, then a dual carriageway, and finally a local road connecting Post Glasgow to Greenock, Gourock and Dunoon. I grew up there, and retain a great affection for the raw and intense beauty of the place. So I asked Martin Parr to collaborate on a project to record these towns and the people who live and work there. John Mcaslan -

Eine wunderbare Kommisions-Arbeit mit überraschend stillen Bildern des Magnum Fotografen.

"Parr's photographs succeed in conveying that very sense of place and belonging: from the blur of sticky fingerprints around a socket switch to a crowd milling on Dunoon pier, a ragbag of teenage goths, tracksuit pants and flat caps. There are portraits of supermarkets, scrapyards, the Cowal Games at Dunoon; the bewildering aquamarine of Gourock lido pulled up against the scruff of a leaden sky and squalling sea; the ill-monikered Fancy Farm housing estate, brick the colour of Wednesday afternoon in the silty grey light that pervades all of these photographs.
There is the old man's club in Port Glasgow, where the grey jowls sag and the orange curtains line up like gaudy-skirted chorus girls. An elderly, anoraked man tumbled on the damp pavement outside a pub in Port Glasgow. "He just rolled out after lunchtime," recalls Parr. And in Dunoon, a waitress in a red-striped blouse gazes out of the window of the Craigan tea room; the eye catches the sugar bowl, the fake dahlias, and the forced exhilaration of her luminous pink hair bobble. "A lot of people saw the pictures and said, 'How depressing'," says McAslan. "But I saw them and chuckled; there is humour, and there is hope" The Guardian -