Niamh McInally

‘A Glasgow Kiss’ is an on-going photographic project that explore’s Glasgow’s informal title as the city of love.

The story goes that in 1868 a wealthy French family donated a small box containing the forearm bones of Saint Valentine to the church of St. Francis in the Gorbals, located in the southside of the city. Saint Valentine, the patron saint of love, beekeeping, epilepsy and young people, was a Roman priest and physician martyred in 296AD whose feast day is celebrated annually on the 14th of February. For over a century, the relics of Saint Valentine sat in almost complete anonymity; in 1999, the remains were rediscovered and displayed inside a small wooden casket in Blessed John Duns Scotus, another chapel in the Gorbals, and have remained on view in the entrance of the church ever since. Inscribed on the box is written, Corpus St. Valentini Martyris, which translates to the body of the martyred Valentine. The rest of Saint Valentine’s remains are supposedly scattered across various cities, including dublin, Birmingham, Rome and Prague.

The bones of one of the most recognised saints in Christianity, often associated with romantic love, quietly resting in one of the least sentimental, most no-nonsense cities on earth is astonishingly fascinating. I would like to think of this on-going project as a visual love letter to the city of Glasgow.