Seacoal

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Youth on wall, Jarrow, Tyneside, 1975. Credit: Chris Killip Photography Trust/Martin Parr Foundation I worry about the digital camera. I tell my students to turn off the screen, and they don’t. They think I’m crazy. I’m not crazy. I know what made my pictures better was the anxiety I had, because I didn’t know what I’d just taken. I couldn’t see it, and I always thought it wasn’t good enough, so I’d push a bit harder. I’d try to make a better picture. Because Chris knew he was dying, and because he was leaving a lot of the work in the [Martin] Parr Foundation as his archive, he did what I’ve been regarding as his first selection of the retrospective,” says Marshall-Grant. The works on display have been curated from that first ‘edit’ by Killip, and, aside from the oversized pieces in the show, the prints were all made by him in the last decade of his life. “So it’s been quite good because we can already feel quite close to what he wanted,” she adds. Unlike Killip, Smith belonged to the community he had photographed. The people who were “defiled” in the article, he writes, “were mostly people from the close community of South Bank, the home town and workplace of my father and his father.”

Chris Killip retrospective adds depth to a remarkable career Chris Killip retrospective adds depth to a remarkable career

More wounding still was a scurrilous report that appeared in a popular north-eastern newspaper under the heading Boozers and Losers, misrepresenting the work as voyeuristic and patronising. An accompanying editorial described the photographers as “a couple of smart alecs from Middlesbrough and Newcastle” – Killip was actually from the Isle of Man – and culminated with the suggestion: “Someone should hang THEM on the walls.” He found a connection with the people there and it shone through just as if he'd lived and breathed and been from there.That’s thousands of images and articles, documenting the history of the medium of photography and its evolution during the last decade, through a unique daily journal. Explore how photography, as an art and as a social phenomenon, continue to define our experience of the world. Two offers are available. The exhibition begins with Killip’s work in the Isle of Man, where he was from, followed by his photographs made in the north of England in the early 1970s. In these images, Grant says, “you get a sense of someone who’s really excited about discovering photography and what photography could do, but also excited about moving through the north of England and figuring out what was taking place there”. Gordon in the water, Seacoal Beach, Lynemouth,1983 Helen and her hula hoop, Seacoal Camp, Lynemouth, Northumbria, 1984 Mr Killip later met a Seacoaler who remembered him at Appleby Horse Fair and he re-introduced the photographer to the community. He moved into a caravan and began documenting their lives.

Seacoal — CHRIS KILLIP Seacoal — CHRIS KILLIP

It’s fair to say Graham lived a wild life when he was shooting,” says Parr. “He had rough times, drinking, sleeping out. But I think of him as one of the great characters of photography. He’s a bit like Josef Koudelka in that way. Until you sit down with him, and hear the stories, you don’t get it. And, of course, his legend has only grown in his absence.” Boo’ on a horse, Seacoal Camp, Lynemouth, Northumbria, 1984. Credit: Chris Killip Photography Trust/Martin Parr Foundation An exhibition of photographs taken by a photographer best-known for capturing the lives of working-class people in the North East is opening in the region. The last picture I took of David. Two years after I’d taken that picture, he was fishing and the boat overturned and David drowned.” —Chris Killip Later, I wanted to get away from this very formal thing and changed my photography, and so I used a plate camera where you had a cape. I had a thumb press, so I’d be looking at you, but you never knew when I was going to take the picture.The Photographers’ Gallery in London is staging a retrospective of his work overseen by photographer Ken Grant and curator Tracy Marshall-Grant, which they hope will bring more context to the man behind the images. It is the first exhibition on Killip since he died from cancer in 2020. Killip had spoken about the idea of a retrospective, but it was “only when he started to become ill that the conversations really accelerated”, Grant says.