Plate G4.no14: The Finnieston Crane (Glasgow)

I belong to Glasgow – I must do, I was born in Glasgow, lived here all my life. But I’ve often had that origin queried: my demeanour does not fit the norm – my stance is affected and my voice soft, languid even, hardly the guttural tone so ubiquitously associated with the city, a city synonymous with heaving industry and brutal decency.
That image, however, is hardly true of the city today – that industrial landscape is long gone. Yet its shadow permeates, persistently.
The manipulation of this photograph is deliberate, therefore – to reinforce the fact, that the reality is (considerably) less evident than the influence the past reflects.
As for me, I’m not sure that I fit with either – regardless, apparently yet: ‘Glasgow belongs to me’…