‘I’m not into leather at all!’: John Wood on privately photographing Glasgow’s gay underground, and the comparisons with Robert Mapplethorpe

He was a telecoms engineer by day – and documented the Scottish city’s leather scene by night. Now the 79-year-old has opened his erotic archives and received his first ever solo exhibition

What is the story behind John Wood’s photographs? Some might guess that his portraits, which capture male subjects in various states of undress, very often wearing black leather jackets, gloves and boots, were taken in New York in the era of BDSM photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and Studio 54. Or maybe they were created in a very different kind of darkroom – the type of spaces that inspired the homoerotic imagery of the artist Tom of Finland? If you were given a hundred tries, you’d probably never guess that these erotic, intimate, kinky portraits were taken in a converted attic in the West End of Glasgow, unbeknown to the world (and the neighbours) for decades.

The story of Wood himself is equally unusual. At 79, he is showcasing his first ever solo show at Celine gallery in Glasgow. To say it has been a long time coming would be an understatement: Wood has been making photographs since his teens, when he began teaching himself by studying the images in magazines. The portraits in the show span a 20-year period, from ‘Cal’, a small Polaroid of a man standing nude next to a white doorway, taken in 1982, to ‘June 2002’, a gelatin silver print of an unnamed man clad in a leather waistcoat, while a black leather military-style cap and a cigarette obscure most of his face.
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