Never forgotten
Social documentary photographer Patricia Anne ‘Tish’ Murtha was at the beginning of what looked like a very promising and important career in the 1980s. When her daughter Ella was born, faced with life as a single parent, everything changed.
Her photography career never truly recovered and, tragically, on 13 March 2013, Tish died suddenly from a brain aneurysm, just one day before her 57th birthday. Ella herself had a child under two at the time. Now, Ella manages the Tish Murtha archive – a full-time job. At the end of 2018, images from Tish Murtha’s extensive archive were shown at Photo North in Harrogate. While there, I sat down with Ella to discuss her mother’s legacy and the work she’s been doing to preserve it.
After spending her childhood in North East England, Tish’s photographic career had a promising start – she studied under David Hurn on the famous Documentary Photography course at Newport, and just before Ella was born in 1984, Tish had major exhibitions at London’s The Photographer’s Gallery
