A striking interpretation of the work Chris Killip produced in northeast England and Ireland between 1975 and 1986, bringing together many previously unpublished photographs.
 
From Huddersfield to the fishing communities along the North Yorkshire coast, through the intensity of the miners’ strike, Killip’s camera documented the social divisions and communities that defined part of England during those years.
 
Born on the Isle of Man in 1946, he devoted much of his career to photographing life in northern England, paying particular attention to the economic and social difficulties affecting these communities.
 
Although his work belongs to the documentary tradition, Killip’s photographs are marked by a distinctive sensitivity and his refusal to reduce the people he photographed to simple stereotypes. As Killip himself explained: “I wanted to record people’s lives because I valued them. I wanted them to be remembered.” It is precisely this way of approaching his subjects that helps his photographs remain relevant, reminding us of some of the divisions that still persist in British society.
 
With more than half of its images published here for the first time, Chris Killip: North offers a journey through the photographer’s work in northeast England, alongside a selection of photographs made in Ireland and the Isle of Man. Edited by Mark Holborn and produced with exclusive access to Killip’s archive, the book allows his work to be reconsidered from a broad perspective and the social dimension of his photography to be understood.
 
As Holborn observes, “we live in a world as fragmented as the one Killip witnessed forty or fifty years ago. Our consciousness continues to be haunted by the intensity of our divisions.”