‘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 the...

By Louis Staples