He captured the beauty of ordinary people in ordinary situations throughout the 1950s and 1960s and now previously unseen images of photographer Oscar Marzaroli will be published for the first time.

Almost 20 years after his death, interest in the photographs of the Italian-Scot will be reignited with the publication on January 4 of Slate, Sea and Sky: A Journey from Glasgow to the Isle of Luing.

Marzaroli, who died aged 55 in 1988, produced a remarkable record of Glasgow and post-war Scotland and became famed for his iconic images of Gorbals in the 1960s.

Slate, Sea and Sky has been worked on by his widow Anne, who has sifted through hundreds of unpublished images to select the best for the book, which will feature verse from Glasgow-born poet Norman Bissell.

The images were taken on various tours Marzaroli took across Scotland between 1962 and 1984.

Mr Bissell said: "I was always an admirer of Oscar's photographs.

"Being a Glaswegian poet, I could not fail to be indirectly inspired by his iconic images, which captured so well the changing face of the city and its people.

"His widow, Anne, became aware of my poems and offered me the opportunity to use Oscar's photographs alongside them in the book.

"We spent hours together sifting through hundreds of Oscar's pictures, searching for those which would best compliment my poems."

Slate, Sea and Sky includes images of Gorbals children playing on a construction site; salmon fishermen on Staffin on the Isle of Skye and children holding hands in a school playground.

Landscapes chosen for the book include Kelvingrove Park, Sunset on the Butt of Lewis and Loch Lomond.

Marzaroli was born in Castiglione in north-west Italy, but was taken to Scotland with his family at the age of two. His work came to national attention in the 1980s with the publication of three collections of his photographs by the Edinburgh publishing house Mainstream.

Pop outfit Deacon Blue have used his photographs on their album and single covers and in 1991 the musicians, plus other Scots bands including Wet Wet Wet and Texas created the album The Tree, and the Bird and the Fish and the Bell in aid of the Oscar Marzaroli Trust.

Marzaroli returned to Glasgow in 1959 after a long spell in an Aberdeenshire sanatorium where he recovered from tuberculosis.

In an interview published in 1986, two years before his death, Marzaroli said he was compelled to return to the city which had focused the language of his photographs.

Marzaroli said: "When I got back to Glasgow in 1959 the city was changing and I wanted to get it in the can.

"A place like the Gorbals was a microcosm of what was happening in all the great cities of the world."

However, he was aware his images of street life and working-class domesticity were not to everyone's tastes.

Slate, Sea and Sky: A Journey From Glasgow to the Isle of Luing is published on January 4 by Luath Press, priced £15.