A sympathetic portrayal of lives that “had history done to them”
One of my favourite photographs in the ongoing Chris Killip’s retrospective at the Photographers’ Gallery (running until 19th February 2023) is one of a baby looking out of an open door. The composition is excellent. Two children, on either side of the door, stare at the camera, an adult gazes the other way and the infant seems to appear in the frame as if by chance. Snap! Now, that baby is part photographic of history.
Manx Killip’s work focused at first on the communities in which he grew up on the Isle of Man. Later on (and this is the material that makes up the bulk of this exhibition) he turned his lens on the northeast of England. It was here that he and his machine chronicled the breakdown of communities in Yorkshire, Newcastle and Northumbria.
As the exhibition blurb tells us, Killip wasn’t trusted at first by the locals. It took him some time, with a lot of persuasion, to be allowed to take photos in these communities. His patience paid off. The images on the wall speak of camaraderie and hope; they also speak of industrial deterioration and social decline.
The one word that kept cropping up during my recent visit to the Photographers’ Gallery was “intimacy”. Killip achieves a closeness with his subjects that is rarely afforded working class people. Whether patronising, accusatory or voyeuristic, the view on blue-collar folk rarely straddles the greys. It’s usually black and white. Chris manages to strike a tender balance between grim and harsh landscape and human beings. Some of the locals appear more than once in his photos, revealing a quick-forming bond that bleeds into his monochrome images.
Chris Killip’s retrospective is a good example of how art is a two-way system. The artist receives as much as they give. Sometimes the return is not money, but a baby’s angelic and surprised face, looking out through an open door.
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Cuban, Immigrant, and Londoner, on sale now.