The first meeting of Glasgow Photography Group took place just over 20 years ago to discuss how to increase the profile of photography in the city. The meeting included a diverse coalition of professional photographers, hobbyists, historians, artists and amateurs – Oscar Marzaroli, Ray McKenzie, Stewart Shaw, Archie McLellan, Malcolm Hill, and Sandy Sharp were just some of the names recorded at the time. Recognising the need for exhibition space and access resources, this was to result in the formation of the photography gallery and open access facility Street Level in 1989, with two ex-students as co-organisers – Martha McCulloch and Catriona Grant of the Department of Fine Art Photography (DFAP), which was started in 1982 at Glasgow School of Art (GSA) by the American landscape photographer Thomas Joshua Cooper.

The history of a resource environment for contemporary art photography in Scotland as a whole is concise. Following GSA, Edinburgh College of Art set up a Fine Art Photography Department with Murray Johnstone as its first head, closely followed by Napier Polytechnic. Stills opened in 1977 as a result of the work of the Scottish Photography Group, and Portfolio Gallery and Photography Workshop Edinburgh were established in 1987 by Gloria Chalmers and Jane Brettle. The Scottish Society for the History of Photography was established in 1983 and has published a regular journal, Studies in Photography. The Scottish National Photography Collection was set up by the National Galleries of Scotland just over 20 years ago, and there is now talk of relocating this to a proposed Scottish National Centre for Photography on Edinburgh’s Calton Hill.

A review of the list of some of the recipients of the now defunct Richard Hough Bursary with GSA connections illustrates how many artists’ work combines concerns and practices from many disciplines, be it sculpture, video or painting. These include Anne Elliot, 1993 (painter turned photographer); David Michael Clarke, 1996 (sculptor turned photographer); Alexander and Susan Maris, 1997 (artists who ‘use’ photography); Dalziel + Scullion, 1998 (environmental art, post-graduate sculpture and Fine Art Photography), and Alan Currall, 1998 (MFA). The ubiquity of photography is now absolute. Artists work across various different media and often treat photography as a secondary aspect of their work. Some artists, like Vaughan Judge, Lesley Punton, Olwen Shone, Susie Baker and Frances McCourt, have clearly photographic concerns, others, like Torsten Lauschmann, Thomas Seest, Anne Berge Hansen and Tatiana Maria Lund, pursue aesthetically informed practices which fall outside the conventional history of the medium. An even more extreme example is an earlier graduate in the ‘80s, Ewan Morrison (who refers to himself as a ‘Scottish purveyor of erudite filth’), an inventive installation / moving image maker and critic in the ‘90s, who has now resurfaced after a prolonged period of obscurity from artistic ‘circles’ as one of the most gifted and accomplished writers in Scotland on the basis of his first novel Swung.

There are open opinions as to the significant impact of DFAP on the Glasgow art scene, but interesting contemporary image-makers have clearly emerged. The cosmopolitan push and pull of the city’s artistic tide mean that many are contributing to the larger framework of critical and cultural activity from the local to the international. Some of that has intersected with Street Level. Early solo shows included Peter Finnemore, who represented Wales at the Venice Biennale in 2005, John Duncan, Harry Kerr, Callum Angus Mackay, Roger Palmer, Annette Heyer, Claudine Hartzel, Jim Harold, and Catriona Grant. These are just some of the artists with former GSA links that have had monographic exhibitions at Street Level.

Talking to former students, what stands tall above all is the departmental sense of camaraderie and peer generated vigour within a fine art department, with a free designation as to what constitutes photographic practice. Some ex-students went on to form their own alternative structures and artists spaces not just for display but also to affect and have control over their artistic discourse. For an all too short period in the mid-1990s, Exhibition Space at Java staged a vigorous flurry of mixed exhibitions by a wide range of emerging artists, organised by Dettie Flynne, Mij Rothera and Iseult Timmermans. Several years later the artists’ group Volume was formed to further the work of its members, which included Kate Jo, Kate Robertson, Betty Meyer, and Barbara Wilson. More recently, Vanessa Wenwieser has been involved in Photo-Debut, a predominantly London-based network that connects and supports talented, emerging photographers. Wenwieser is one of a younger generation who move between commercial work and their own artistic practice as micro-creative industries, always alert to new opportunities. Others include Kirsty Anderson, who graduated in 1999, and was winner of both UK Best Magazine and Best Business Photographer Awards in 2003, and Andrew Lee, who specialises in architectural photography. As well as pursuing their own practice, artists Christina McBride, Rachel Thibbotumunuwe, Colin Andrews, Jim Hamlyn and Michelle Lazenby, are also active in either formal or gallery educational settings around lens-based media.

The contextual and cultural issues surrounding the use of photography and its continued diversity are as strong as ever. Networks such as ‘Scottish Photographers’ have emerged in recent years to provide support to the current grassroots through print, web and events, sometimes in association with existing galleries. At this juncture, it is the knowledge of how local practice diverges and converges with international concerns with an understanding of the complexities of contemporary production and dissemination that will help more of Glasgow’s ‘image-makers’ to shine through.