I've posted on photogrpaher Chris Killip a few times – here, here, and here. Back in 1988 he published In Flagrante, his acclaimed book of photojournalism on the effects of de-industrialisation on the north-east. In 2016 it was re-issued in larger format, with a slightly different selection, as In Flagrante Two.
He died in 2020, and there's now a fine retrospective of his work just opened at the Photographer's Gallery, with an accompanying book.
His sustained immersion into the communities he photographed remains without parallel. Whilst marking a moment of deindustrialisation, Killip's stark yet tender observation moves beyond the urgency to record such circumstances, to affirm the value of lives he grew close to – lives that, as he once described 'had history done to them', who felt history's malicious disregard and yet, like the photographer himself, refused to yield or look away.
A few of his Tyneside photos:
Wallsend, 1975
Wallsend Housing Looking East, 1975
Tyne Pride from a back lane, Wallsend, 1975
Tyne Pride at the end of the street, Wallsend. 1975
Outside Redheads Shipyard, South Shields, Tyneside, 1976
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Demolished housing, Wallsend, August 1977
[Images © Chris Killip Photography Trust/Magnum Photos]
Mick Hartley 
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