Starting with a month-long stretch at Maryhill Burgh Halls - situated just a stone’s throw away from where some of the images were taken - Glasgow will be the final destination for the collection by documentary photographer Nick Hedges, which is set to tour the city throughout 2016.

The Maryhill exhibition includes a series of photographs taken within the vicinity of the Burgh Halls where they are now displayed.

Commissioned in 1968 by housing and homelessness charity Shelter, the ‘Make Life Worth Living’ collection by Nick Hedges is dominated by photographs of Glasgow’s poor housing in the 1960s and 70s and features Maryhill, Govan and the Gorbals.

Hedges began by photographing the tenement slums of the city’s Gorbals area—once the most populated district—before heading north and west to the equally overcrowded Maryhill, where an army garrison had been kept until the 1960s.

Speaking at the launch of the exhibition in Glasgow yesterday, Nick Hedges said: “It feels like the collection has come full circle and is back in the city where so many of the images were taken.

“It was in Glasgow that I witnessed some of the most unthinkable living conditions. I remember being surprised by the resolve and tenacity of the people I met. I saw people living in – even back then – intolerable living conditions, but it was there that I met the strongest-willed and determined people – determined to escape poverty for the sake of their children.

“Through Shelter Scotland’s search for some of the children who I photographed all those years ago, I was pleased to hear that some have gone on to live happy and healthy lives.”

At the time of taking the photographs, Hedges described Glasgow’s tenements as the ‘grimmest environment’ he’d ever encountered.

He said: “This has something to do with the size of the stone used in their construction, the entry to them through the cave like entrances, the deep and dark stairwells and the relentless pattern of streets.”

The exhibition comes after the documentary photographer agreed to lift a 40 year restriction on the use of the photographs in Scotland. Hedges had originally limited their use – as many feature young children and their families – in order to protect the subjects.

Nick Hedges added: “Glasgow is a very different place to the city I visited almost 50 years ago but some of the same problems remain. There are families living in dangerous homes, or in a place that they don’t feel settled – families who only want the best for themselves and their children.”

Nick Hedges, now in his 70s, spent three years visiting some of Scotland’s poorest and most deprived areas, documenting housing conditions and quashing the myth that only people on the streets are homeless.

The open air exhibition at Maryhill Burgh Halls features a dozen photographs out of a collection of over 1,000 images. A separate collection of images from Maryhill is also on display inside the Burgh Halls. Both will run until the first week of December.

One image within the original collection shows a family living in one room in Glasgow’s Maryhill. During their meeting with Nick Hedges they recounted to him how they slept with the lights on in a bid to scare off rats. They told him that one night they had counted 16 rats in the small, damp room.

Graeme Brown, director of Shelter Scotland, said: “These photographs are a sobering piece of history not only for Shelter Scotland, but the nation as a whole. They show us how far we have come in providing safe, secure and affordable housing to the people of Scotland, but also that we must do more for the tens of thousands of families and individuals still desperate for a home to call their own.

“Almost 50 years after these pictures were taken, it is a mark of shame that almost 5,000 children in Scotland - almost 1,000 of them in Glasgow - will wake up tomorrow homeless.

“I encourage everyone to visit the exhibition at Maryhill Burgh Halls and to share in this important piece of Scotland’s social history.”

Christine Grady, heritage development manager at Maryhill Burgh Halls, said: “The Burgh Halls’ exhibition space aims to represent the history and heritage of Maryhill, both the good times and the bad. Many visitors to Shelter Scotland’s exhibition at the Halls have already related to the images, recollecting their own childhood in the area.

“By displaying the exhibition in our public areas, we hope to contribute to Shelter Scotland’s effort in identifying the people in the photographs, so they can share their experiences of tenement life in 1970s.”

@shelterscotland