The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Pop star raising funds to put photographer’s iconic images online
ARTS: Ricky Ross to launch £200,000 campaign over archive of work of Oscar Marzaroli
The entire archive of the celebrated Scottish photographer who shot Deacon Blue’s iconic Raintown album cover is to be made freely available online.
The Oscar Marzaroli images were donated to Glasgow Caledonian University by his family yesterday, the 31st anniversary of his death.
They document the lives of ordinary people in the Gorbals and became synonymous with 1960s Glasgow.
A special event will see Deacon Blue singer Ricky Ross launch a £200,000 fundraising campaign to make up to 50,000 images freely available online.
He said “Oscar’s work is part of Scotland’s social history.
“I got in touch with Oscar after I became fascinated with his work, and he ended up coming out with us and shooting some photographs for our first Deacon Blue album in different locations.
“I’d told him about the idea of Raintown and he called me one day to say there was a picture he thought suited it.
“It’s the one of the sunshine coming through the clouds.
“We loved it and our music from that period has been linked to Oscar ever since.”
Italian-born Oscar moved to Scotland at the age of two.
He captured Scotland and its people at a time of great social change in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, when city slums were being cleared to make way for new social housing.
He died aged 55 in 1988. Marie-Claire Marzaroli, one of Oscar’s three daughters, said: “It was our mother’s wish we find the right setting to preserve his legacy and the family are excited by the university’s plans to make the photos available online.”
Money from the fundraiser will be used to preserve, catalogue and digitise the various photographic mediums.