For today's #SundayThoughts let's visit Glasgow in 1980, courtesy of the street photography of Raymond Depardon...

In 1980 the Sunday Times sent French photographer Raymond Depardon to Glasgow, for a piece they were doing on tourist destinations.

However Depardon had other ideas, and the photos he took captured the parts of Glasgow he found interesting: Govan, Maryhill and the Gorbals.

Raymond Depardon is a well known photojournalist in France. As part of the Magnum photo agency covered the Algerian war, Chad, Angola and many other conflict areas. Asking him to take photos of the tourist spots of Glasgow was an unusual brief.

He soon became bored photographing golf courses and hotels. Instead he set out to document the areas of Glasgow that had been hardest hit by the recession.

Speaking little English Depardon was instead guided by his instincts. Local children showed him where they played, delighted to show the Frenchman around the areas of the city they knew best.

Depardon had an eye for the unusual an an instinctive sympathy for working class people and their lives. His photos capture a side of life that was often ignored by the London dominated press.

Over the course of two 10 day visits he explored the areas hardest hit by the 80s recession and documented how it had hit home in 'the second city of Empire'.

Depardon's imagery is stark and uncompromising. He tried hard to capture the essence of a place undergoing great difficulty without romanticising or trivialising his subjects.

Needless to say his work wasn't what the Sunday Times had in mind, and his photographs were unpublished by the newspaper.

However after many years they were published in an excellent 2016 book 'Glasgow' as well as featuring in a major exhibit at Street Level Photoworks in the Trongate.

Depardon's Glasgow is an amazing collection of photographs, showing how a community manages in times of dislocation and uncertainty. His book is an excellent work and the Magnum Agency has also put many of these photos online, so have a Glasgow Google if you can!