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B+W
In his ongoing series on classic photography books, Alex Schneideman
takes a look at Chris Steele-Perkins’ remarkable documentation of thenorth-east of England, Northern Exposures. What he discovers is a poeticjourney that celebrates the people and their way of life.FEATURE LIGHT ON THE NORTHAll images
© Chris Steele-Perkins›
B
oth eulogy and elegy is how Steele-
Perkins describes his classic work of
documentary covering the Durham
Coalfield between 2001 and 2005.
The eulogy may be for what the great coal
towns of the north-east had once been and
the elegy could be for what they had become.
A vantage point of nearly two decades since
the book’s publication allows new themes
to form like a patina. As time goes on,
the themes and tone of the photography
become richer and more beautiful just as,
left exposed to the elements, a dazzling
verdigris accretes to a copper pipe.
The Durham Coalfield, situated nearNewcastle in the north-east of England, was
developed in the full roar of the industrial
revolution of the 1840s as demand grew
for coal to power steam turbines and
engines. Extraction from this coalfield
reached a peak in 1913 and then declined
until the 1980s when Margaret Thatcher’s
Conservative government decided that coal
mining was economically finished in the
UK, and almost all collieries were closed.The strikes of 1983-4 pitched miners and
their families against the interests of a
government bound by an ideology it was
ruthlessly executing. As the coal mines
shut down so did the communities that
serviced and surrounded them.
When Steele-Perkins began
photographing this area, originally on a
commission by Newcastle’s Side Gallery,
the social upheaval of closures had had
more than 15 years to set in. But, for
Steele-Perkins, the object of the exercise
was not to go where other photographers
had gone before; gazing solely on the social
deprivation wrought in community after‘he relationship between people
and nature is the central theme
of Northern Exposures.’