Island Life: Photographs from the Martin Parr Foundation
Chris Killip
Born 1946, Isle of Man, died 2020, Cambridge, USA
‘When I looked at my work on the walls of the museum in Germany, I realised that I was, by default, the chronicler of the “De-Industrial Revolution” in Britain.’
Chris Killip saved his earnings from summer beach photography to move to London and got a job assisting the advertising photographer Adrian Flowers. Whilst in New York on a work trip, Killip visited MoMA to look at a Bill Brandt exhibition. He also looked at the work of Paul Strand and Walker Evans in the museum’s permanent collection. Influenced and motivated, Killip returned to the Isle of Man to photograph. In 1975 he was awarded a two-year Northern Arts photography residency and settled in Newcastle. Killip was a founding member of Side gallery. Whilst living in Newcastle, Killip photographed extensively throughout the region. The most significant projects being a community of seacoal workers, the 1984 miners strike, shipbuilding, and Skinningrove, a coastal village that once thrived on ironstone mining, ironworks, and coble boat fishing. In 1991 he took up a position at Harvard, where he worked until 2017.
