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Chris Killip Caught in the Act: A Conversation with Photographer Chris Killip

Chris Killip is widely regarded as one of the most influential British photographers of his generation. Born in the Isle of Man in 1946, he began his career as a commercial photographer before turning to his own work in the late 1960s. His book, In Flagrante, a collection of photographs made in the North East of England during the 1970s and early 1980s, is now recognized as a landmark work of documentary photography. Other bodies of work include the series Isle of Man, Seacoal, Skinningrove and Pirelli. Apart from a commercial exhibition in Santa Monica, California, in 2008, entitled Three from Britain, in which his work was exhibited alongside Killip’s and Parr’s, Smith has not allowed his pictures to be shown in a gallery until now. His isolation in rural Northumberland seems to have led to a kind of creative reinvention as a writer, with both Edwards and Parr attesting to his skill at recalling the people and places he photographed decades ago. Chris Killip, who has died aged 74 from lung cancer, was one of Britain’s greatest documentary photographers. His most compelling work was made in the north-east of England in the late 1970s and early 80s and was rooted in the relationship of people to the places that made – and often unmade – them as the traditional jobs they relied on disappeared. In 1988 he published In Flagrante, a landmark of social documentary that has influenced generations of younger photographers. His friend and fellow photographer Martin Parr described it as “the best book about Britain since the war”.Ms Marshall-Grant said: "Chris also gave them work as well. Whenever Chris printed one of his zines or books, they were tasked. Chris Killip’s work is impassioned, urgent – but it is rarely tragic, despite the circumstances faced by many of the people he photographed, and remained close to, over the course of his life. There are images that will evoke tragedy in some audiences, but then, for Killip, it was never about audiences.

Chris Killip, retrospective | Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art

In 1971, Lee Witkin, a New York gallery owner, commissioned a limited edition portfolio of Killip’s Isle of Man photographs. The advance allowed him to continue working independently and, in 1974, he was commissioned to photograph Huddersfield and Bury St Edmunds, which resulted in an exhibition, Two Views, Two Cities, held at the art galleries of each city. The following year he was given a two-year fellowship by Northern Arts to photograph the north-east. He worked in Tyneside for the next 15 years, living in a flat in Bill Quay, Gateshead, and steadily creating the body of work that would define him as a documentary photographer. Baltic Flour Mills Visual Arts Trust, incorporated in England and Wales, company limited by guarantee, No: 3589539 | Registered Charity No: 1076251 I’m a content producer in the Interpretive Content Department of the J. Paul Getty Museum. Before coming to the Getty, I was a longtime producer and reporter for the BBC World Service. 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.”

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Gordon in the water, Seacoal Beach, Lynemouth, 1983. Credit: Chris Killip Photography Trust/Martin Parr Foundation

CHRIS KILLIP Books and publications — CHRIS KILLIP

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 Drop by as photographer Luther Gerlach explores the art and science of early photography while demonstrating a variety of photographic processes and materials including large-format cameras, lenses, and interactive camera obscuras. This is a free, drop-in program.

Chris Killip, born on the Isle of Man in 1946, is a Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University where he has taught since 1991. The people I like very much and I’m very close to, sometimes I don’t get a picture that I think does them justice because I know so much about them