Tayside has been t he focus of phot ography’s hist ory Calum Colvin

In the University of Dundee Archives sits one man’s collection of 130,000 prints and negatives that provide an extraordinary glimpse of life in the mid-20th Century.

This was Michael Peto, the son of a village shopkeeper who escaped the Nazi occupation by fleeing his native Hungary weeks before the borders closed in 1939.

His images were eclectic, from candid shots of music and theatre, to iconic photos of The Beatles.

The fact that the university is custodian to such an important body of work is testament to the role photography has played in the city of Dundee.

The first photographic studio was opened in the Nethergate in 1847 by a Mr E Holmes.

James Valentine established Valentine & Sons Ltd in 1851 and his commission to photograph the Tay Rail Bridge for the Court of Enquiry after the disaster in 1879 led to a set of images that were reexamined in 2003 and allowed researchers to see more clearly why the bridge had collapsed.

Joseph McKenzie,“the father of modern Scottish photography” moved from London to Dundee in 1964 to the nascent photography department at DJCAD and there he stayed until retirement in 1986, teaching numerous generations of photographers, including myself in the 1980s.

And Iain McMillan, a Dundee High School boy from Carnoustie, found friendship with Yoko Ono through his Book of London from 1966. From there John Lennon invited him to photograph the iconic Abbey Road zebra crossing cover.