"What are you photographing?” a voice called.

                                            I replied, “I didn't know anyone lived here…”

                                                                                                “I live here,” she said.


These are the first words Chris Leslie had with Dalmarnock resident Margaret Jaconelli, outside her seemingly abandoned Glasgow tenement in 2008. The photographer was exploring the area during a process of demolition and regeneration in the lead up to the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Ten years on, Leslie has revisited the project for Beyond The Games, documenting that process and promise of a better built environment in an exhibition that centres communities and people.



Beyond The Games, presented at artist-led charity Strange Fields, comprises two films by Leslie, archive footage of Dalmarnock from the 60s, and a series of photographs pairing portraits of people of the area taken in lead up to the games, and captured again in 2024. The exhibition is filled with raw and engaging photography of half demolished buildings on deserted streets, people sometimes in battle with police under the threat of eviction, children playing by derelict buildings, and the changes ten years later in front of new housing and community buildings.

I asked Leslie about what attracted him to this story: “It was really exciting to capture that change in the city. There wasn't much left in Dalmarnock by the time I started, I was surrounded by all these half broken tenements that had been left to rot, which I found really strange and scary. I have spent a good part of the past 25 years documenting former Yugoslavia, and this to me looked like the front lines of Sarajevo.”





Leslie has previously documented demolition across Glasgow in his project and photobook Disappearing Glasgow, but there was something particularly poignant and sad about the tenement flats. “There was just silence, where is everybody? And so, photographing empty flats – or what I thought were empty –  I heard this wee women shouting at me out the window.” The resident, Margaret Jaconelli, features prominently in the exhibition’s first film and was the last remaining hold-out in the area, eventually evicted by force after an eight-year battle to stay.

Witnessing the stories of people of Dalmarnock and the demolition of these tenements make for the most evocative and powerful images of the exhibition. What’s especially striking is that for all of the promise of nice new homes, what we see being demolished are stone tenements flats of Glasgow – an iconic and much-loved part of Scotland’s built environment and arguably some of the best form of housing in Europe.

After making connection with the community members, Leslie spoke about the importance of seeing the person first. “With Margaret, at first I thought ‘here we go’, because walking around Glasgow with a camera you get a hard time,” the photographer said, adding “but then we chatted for two hours and I kept the camera by my side as that would have broken the conversation – which has now been going on for 16 years. So there's something to be said for not rushing pictures, just listening. Photographing buildings is easy, but photographing people and telling their stories is more difficult and requires more engagement.”




The second film made in 2024 is a fantastic piece of work that effectively eschews video footage for a slideshow of stills showing changes in the area. The video is reminiscent of Chris Marker, the stillness of each image making an impact alongside a sense of time passing and contrast between the decades. Throughout, the film is narrated with an aural history from former residents and councillors, the character of the Glaswegian accent being especially evocative.

I ask Leslie about how he thinks the people of Dalmarnock feel ten years on. “There's a lot of people that feel shafted, for lack of a better word. In 2007/8 there was all this PR and computer-generated images of new homes, everyone in Dalmarnock thought they would be getting a new house. That was never to be the case. There was a lot of upheaval for local people, but it wasn't for them, it was for Glasgow.”

Hosting the exhibition in Dalmarnock was key, with Strange Field’s venue in one of the area's few listed buildings making it easy to visit for the people featured in the works. Included in the presentation is a silent film, made by Reverend Gordon Strachan, which Leslie similarly felt important to include it as the area's heyday was something constantly referenced by older generations: “They were telling me, ‘you need to go back as this area was thriving industrial community’, and the film is beautiful, it captures that.”

There are also positive stories in the show, from newly built modern community buildings to people Leslie interviewed who as teens got a leg up from the regeneration into now successful adults. “It would have been very easy to have made a project about how much of total fuck up it was. Physically parts of Dalmarnock, the athletes’ village, and velodrome look great, but there's still a lot of work to be done. Even the council, well intentioned at the start, would admit that for a 25-year plan they've taken the foot off the pedal. But hopefully with these new residents of the last 10 years, they won't stand for any similar upheaval.”




The question over who this change was for, and why a city such as Glasgow needs a mega sporting event to make anything happen, came up in conversation. It made me think of the current state of the city and communities under threat. The campaign Save the Wyndford seeks to rescue a set of perfectly adequate post-war flats in north Glasgow whose residents are currently being kicked out so developers can pursue profitable rebuilds. A punitive action that happens a lot in Glasgow, which can be seen not just with housing but also, for example, with the closure of the popular Kingston Bridge Skate Park and threats to close Bellahouston’s urban farm.

For a city so enamoured with the pull of demolition – or “a constant wiping the slate clean,” as Leslie describes it – you can see why SAVE Britain’s Heritage are leading a campaign in Scotland to call for a national debate questioning the demolition of listed buildings. With the project going on to be archived digitally, Leslie reflects on Beyond The Games: “It's a critical analysis of what the city has been doing and what has been lost. There's no hidden agenda, it's a very simple documentation of what's happened, but at the same time it's profound as a lot of these places no longer exist.”

When it comes to demolition it's a process that provokes strong emotions, as buildings, homes urban landscapes are so tied with memory, identity and community. Furthermore, in the climate emergency we're in, breaking that cycle of demolition and development is essential to cutting pollution caused by construction and meeting necessary environmental targets.

What Beyond The Games does so well, is that it puts the focus on the people and communities affected by these decisions. It doesn't lose sight of them, even decades afterwards, and allows you to make your own judgments on what really makes a better built environment for everyday people.