An award-winning photo-journalist, documentary film-maker and author, Nick Danziger comes from the best tradition where photography complements his writing and travelling. His words and pictures draw us into an extraordinary world of danger and comedy, of pathos and humanity. Here he takes us on an intimate tour of modern, marginalised East End of Glasgow; to exotic and war-ravaged Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan; and to Tijuana, the Mexican border-town separating the Third World from the First.

What could be more different than the modern, marginalised East End of Glasgow; Kabul, the exotic and war-ravaged capital of Afghanistan; and Tijuana, the Mexico border-town separating the Third World from the First? Yet through the eyes of Nick Danziger we see disturbing similarities.

The Timothy Taylor Gallery is honoured to present this unnervingly intimate yet uplifting portrait of three diverse communities in an exhibition of black and white photographs by the author of the best-selling adventure classic Danziger’s Travels. Our show (October 1997) coincided with the paperback publication of Danziger’s Britain - A Journey to the Edge.

An award-winning photo-journalist, documentary film maker and author, Nick Danziger is renowned for visiting the world’s most dangerous and forgotten places and there finding humanity triumphant. His work has been compared to Eugene Smith’s Minimata portraits, the early works of Bill Brandt, and the State Farm Commission records of the Oklahoma migration in 1930’s America.

His War, Lives and Videotapes (1991), on orphans abandoned in an Afghan mental asylum, won the Prix Italia. His work for Channel 4 included tracing Orwell’s footsteps in Down and Out in Paris (1993); and Postcards from the Edge (1996), charting Britain’s underclass in six stories short-listed for the Grierson Award and nominating him as the Royal Television Society’s "Journalist of the Year". His photo exhibition, A British Journey (January to April 1996), opened at the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television in Bradford, where he was the Fellow in 1994-1995, and toured Newcastle and London.

A man rarely at rest, Danziger relentlessly probes three diverse communities, leaving us with unnervingly personal portraits of Glasgow’s dispossessed, Afghanistan’s terrorized victims of civil war, and Mexicans without hope but to sneak north as illegal immigrants. He rewards us with gripping moments and striking encounters having chosen to work in the world’s most neglected and dangerous places but, time and again, we emerge finding humanity triumphant.

These are but a small selection of photographic insights from Danziger’s many journeys, and from his books and films. They are permanent documentation of people’s lives and hardships, of unemployment and of violence. But they are also a lasting testimony to the strength and resilience of the forgotten.


"A Tale of Three Cities - Glasgow, Kabul, Tijuana"
TIJUANA
In Tijuana, South of the "Yanqui" border, fake Rolex and Gucci watches sell for the price of a London cheeseburger. You can get married in a brothel one night and divorced the next. In a city of two million, locals joke that the population drops to half at nightfall, with the rest trying to sneak north into the United States. It is the world’s busiest land border. Counting only the "legals" more than 50 million cross each year. Tijuana’s Chamber of Commerce calls it the world’s most visited city, yet few tourists remain overnight - most spend but a few hours on "El Main Street" hoping the bottled water wasn’t filled at a street-side tap.

KABUL
Once a quiet, overgrown, residential town of nearly a million, Kabul has become a charnel house. In ten years of Soviet invasion and eight of civil war, nationwide violence drove millions of refugees into Pakistan and Iran and others into the capital itself. A third of the nation’s population is dead or in exile and more flee every day. The Taliban, so-called religious students who are Kabul’s latest warlords, forbid women to work, closed schools for girls, and demand that men wear beards. Today, gun-slinging rustics force the remaining city-folk into an unfamiliar world more medieval than modern.

GLASGOW
1990 gave Glasgow new prestige as Europe’s cultural center, yet part of its East End sees children stigmatised by ghetto-life in the shadow of street gangs. Theirs is truly a tale of two cities: "Cathlicks and Proddies", Celtic and Rangers, Green and Blue. These streets are virtually devoid of traffic and deliverymen are afraid to leave their vehicles. Only postmen are safe because people need their giro-cheques, and the two ice cream vans which sell essentials at exorbitant rates: their milk costs the poor 51 pence a pint. Social workers use either one secure car park or an urban corral, hoping for safety in numbers. The steelworks once employed 20,000 in three shifts around the clock, now a shopping precinct and a bingo center have been built in its place.
Acknowledgments: Robert Pledge, for curating the exhibition Dominique Deschavanne at Contact Press Images. Jean-Pierre Le Duc and Choi at Publimod’, Paris for the printing of this show.

Danziger’s Travels (HarperCollins, Flamingo)
Danziger’s Adventures (HarperCollins, Flamingo)
Danziger’s Britain (HarperCollins, Flamingo)

The Times Magazine, The Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, The Observer, The Independent, The Independent On Sunday, The Independent Magazine, The Far Eastern Economic Review

(Producer/ Director/ Writer/ Presenter)
War, Lives, & Videotape, BBC
Down and Out in Paris and London, C4
Adventures in The Land of S.P.L.A.J., + C4
Danziger’s Children, C4

French Letters (4 films), C4
Postcards From The Edge (6 films), C4
The Flight For Hearts and Minds (2 Films), C4
6 Portraits of Eminent Figures, (in progress), C4

The National Museum of Photography, Film, and Television, Bradford
The Photographers Gallery, London
The Oriental Museum, Durham
Palais des Nations, Geneva
The Midland Arts Centre, Birmingham
The University Gallery, Newcastle
The Watershed, Bristol
The National Theatre, London
The Timothy Taylor Gallery, London (October, 1997)

Life, Time, Newsweek, Geo, Stern, The Times, The Observer, The Independent, The Telegraph, Marie Claire, Grazia, Publico

National Museum of Photography
Film & Television, Bradford,
The Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow

The Brown Gallery, New York
The Robert Fraser Gallery, London

John Moores, Liverpool
Arts Council, Mantua, ItalyBritish Council, Osaka, Japan
Royal Academy, London

The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, 1982
The Fellow in Photography National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, 1994
Prix Italia, 1992
Special Award, The World Television Festival, 1993

Best Television Documentary, RTS, 1991
Prix Europa, 1993
Best Television Series, RTS, 1997
The Grierson Award for Best Television Documentary, 1997
Journalist of the Year, RTS, 1997