The work of pioneering photographer Thomas Vernon Begbie is nothing short of remarkable, providing an invaluable window into Edinburgh's past
Begbie - no relation of a certain fictional psychopath, we are reliably informed - created a formidable body of work in an era when photography was in its infancy.
But the fascinating images contained in the glass plates he produced were almost lost to history.
Decades after Begbie's death, in 1950, the collection, which numbered more than 400, and included views of people and places in Edinburgh and the Lothians going back to the 1850s, was discovered in a house at St James Square, where the photographer had grown up a century earlier.
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Had they not been salvaged, the vintage photos would have risked being destroyed when the square was demolished in the 1960s.
Begbie's extraordinary collection was later gifted to the City of Edinburgh by Stanley Cavaye, and is currently held at the City Art Centre.
The photographers work has been the subject of multiple exhibitions and a book: Thomas Begbie's Edinburgh.
