Chris Killip’s was what you might call a social documentary photographer. He recorded the lives of people living in the 1970’s and 80’s in those parts of England that felt left behind and abandoned, because they had been. He died two years ago, having built up a reputation for his generous and respectful black and white images, the result of “sustained immersion and participation … keenly observed”. There are places, people, objects, all seemingly inevitable outcomes of poverty, neglect and deprivation. But the images are beautiful and noble, not really depressing at all, strangely. Luckily.
He came from the Isle of Man, worked for his dad in the pub in the evenings and steadily built up a body of work, working at first in his local community, the one he’d grown up with and knew best, and then travelling further afield, perhaps on commission, to document other, similar places, alike in their “intimacy, kinship and dignities”. There are punks in night clubs, old ladies in handknit cardigans and fisherman in wooden dinghies. The detail is exquisite, the contrast stark. The influence of the ‘greats’ (Walker Evans, Bill Brandt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paul Strand and August Sander) are clearly evident, though he furthers their work. A special and notable part of his approach was earning, over months, the trust and respect of those he wanted to watch and learn from, and finally photograph; an often hard-won task.
