Jürgen Schadeberg produced a wide-ranging documentary archive over his long career, working in both South Africa and Britain. Part of that work includes his photographs of the Gorbals in Glasgow, made during the clearance of the old tenements in the 1960s. The area was being dismantled and rebuilt, and Schadeberg focused on the people who were living through those changes.

He photographed families in the final weeks before they were moved, children playing in partly demolished tenements, and daily routines carried out in buildings that were already marked for removal. His interest was not the demolition itself but how people carried on while their surroundings were being reshaped.

Schadeberg often spoke about the role of the photographer as an observer. “The photographer is a witness,” he said. “The subject reveals the truth when the camera doesn’t interfere.” That approach is evident in the Gorbals work. The photographs are steady in tone. They show households adapting to disrupted streets, newly emptied rooms, and the slow departure of long-established communities.

Within the British Culture Archive, this series stands as an important record of life in the Gorbals at a moment when the area was changing direction. The work gives a clear sense of how the environment altered and how residents adjusted as buildings disappeared around them.