It was during the intervening years back on the Isle
of Man that Killip’s work was to take a direction that
would have a significant effect on his subsequent
work on the North of England throughout the
1970s and 1980s. Having encountered the work of
photographers such as Paul Strand, Walker Evans,
and August Sander at the Museum of Modern Art
while on assignment in New York in 1969, Killip
gave up commercial photography to return home
and photograph the Island as he experienced it. The
result was not of a body of work that expressed his
own personal story of life on the island but rather a
narrative that told the story of the changing social
relations between the islanders and their environment
as he experienced it during social upheavals brought
about by changing population demographics and the
influx of wealthy financial services workers onto
the island. Although his photographs of the island
and its inhabitants appeared in a number of photo-
essays between 1969 and 1973, the complete body
of work was not published as the bookIsle of Man
until 1980.
In the years between photographing and publish-
ing his work on the Isle of Man, Killip began to
photograph in the north-east of England. In 1972,
he received a commission from the Arts Council of
Great Britain for the touring exhibitionTwo Views-
Two Citiesand during the same year, he also exhib-
ited in the Photographers’ Gallery in London in the
group showFour Photographers. Killip’s work on
the North-East during these early years was also
supported by a number of major awards throughout
the early and mid-1970s. He received an Arts Coun-
cil of Great Britain Photography Award for the year
1973–1974 and between 1975–1976 he was the reci-
pient of the Northern Arts Photography Fellowship.
In 1977, Killip was also awarded an Arts Council of
Great Britain Major Bursary Award.
It would be wrong to portray Killip during this
period as journeyman photographer, traveling
throughout and photographing north-east England.
Killip was also very much to the fore of a fledgling
photographic culture during this period, making
a significant contribution to bringing photography
to a wider public audience. Between 1976 and 1980,
he served as a member of the Photography Commit-
tee of Northern Arts in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne,
making awards to other young photographers. Dur-
ing this time, 1977–1979, he was also a member of
the Photography Committee of the Arts Council of
Great Britain.
Killip’s role in supporting photography was not
just confined to an administrative role sitting on
Arts Council committees. In 1976, he was a founding
member of the influential Side Gallery in Newcastle-
Upon-Tyne. Between 1976 and 1984, Killip played
an active role as an exhibition curator and advisor
before serving as Director of the Side Gallery be-
tween 1977–1979. During his eight-year association
with the Side Gallery, Killip curated and co-curated a
number of exhibitions that brought past and contem-
porary documentary photography to the attention of
the arts community of the north-east. Amongst those
from the past were exhibitions of work by Lewis
Hine, August Sander, Weegee, and nineteenth cen-
tury figures Thomas Annan and E.J. Belloq. Exhibi-
tions of contemporary documentary photographers
included the work of familiar names such as Martine
Frank, Robert Doisneau, Don McCullin, and Gilles
Peress as well as young British photographers Chris
Steel-Perkins and Trish Murtha.
After two years as Photographic Consultant to the
London Review of Booksbetween 1979 and 1981,
Killip spent the next decade concentrating on his
photographic work while at the same time participat-
ing in exhibitions throughout Europe, North Amer-
ica, and the Southern Hemisphere. The many years
spent photographing the North of England culmi-
nated in the publication in 1988 ofIn Flagrante,
recognised as one of the most significant and influ-
ential bodies of British documentary of the twentieth
century. If his photographic influences are predomi-
nantly North American, the direction and subject
matter of this work was very much shaped by the
political and ideological effects on the society of that
period. Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative laissez-
faire economic policies brought about rapid de-
industrialisation throughout North England, the
results of which where etched on its landscape and
the faces of those who remained there. Killip’s work
is not the campaigning social documentary that is the
norm for such subject matter: indeed, he was to
acknowledge in the brief introductory text that the
images said more about his experiences than those
photographed. As Berger was to remark on the stan-
dard photographs of such subject matter:
In Flagrantedoes not belong to this tradition. Chris Killip
is admittedly aware that a better future for the photo-
graphed is unlikely. The debris visible in his photos, the
debris which surrounds protagonists, is already part of a
future which has been chosen—and chosen, according to
the laws of our particular political system, democratically.
(Berger 1988)
Having received the Henri Cartier-Bresson Award
in 1989, Killip was awarded an honorary Master of
Arts by Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachu-
setts in 1994. Between 1994 and 1998, Killip had
held the Chair of the Department of Visual and
Environmental Studies and had been Director ofKILLIP, CHRIS