A New York Times Book Review 2020 holiday gift guide pick
Late in 2016, British photographer Chris Killip’s (born 1946) son discovered a box of contact sheets of the photos his father had made at the Station, an anarcho-punk music venue in Gateshead, Northern England, open from 1981 to 1985. These images of raw youth caught in the heat of celebration had lain dormant for 30 years; they now return to life in this book.
The Station was not merely a music and rehearsal space, but a crucible for the self-expression of the subcultures and punk politics of the time. As Killip recollects: “When I first went to the Station in April 1985, I was amazed by the energy and feel of the place. It was totally different, run for and by the people who went there ... nobody ever asked me where I was from or even who I was. A 39-year-old with cropped white hair, always wearing a suit, with pockets stitched inside the jacket to hold my slides.”
The photographs that Chris Killip (born 1946) took in Northern England between 1973 and 1985 were first published by Secker & Warburg as In Flagrante in 1988, a volume that quickly established itself as the most important 1980s photobook on England and a classic of the genre. Compassionate but unwavering in its gaze, In Flagrante documented industrial Northern England in decline, suffering from the aftershocks of neoliberal economic strategies most brutally embodied in the policies of Margaret Thatcher. "The objective history of England doesn't amount to much if you don't believe in it, and I don't," reflects Killip. "And I don't believe that anyone in these photographs does either, as they face the reality of deindustrialization in a system which regards their lives as disposable." Chris Killip: In Flagrante Two revisits the classic photobook with a beautifully produced, radically updated presentation: each double-page spread features a single image on the right side. Strident in its belief in the primacy and power of the photographic image, In Flagrante Two allows for and embraces ambiguities and contradictions arising from the unadorned narrative sequence, completely devoid of text--forcing viewers to truly look, to witness.
British photographer Chris Killip was born at his father's pub on the Isle of Man in 1946; 18 years later he left his post as a trainee hotel manager to pursue photography full time, photographing the island's beaches. He moved to London shortly thereafter, but decided to return to the Isle of Man early in the 1970s to document its inhabitants, landscapes and disappearing traditional lifestyles. The series was first published in 1980. Thirty years after the publication of Isle of Man, Killip found himself reexamining the negatives from the series in preparation for an upcoming retrospective in Germany. "I hadn't had an occasion to think about this work since the first edition of the book was published," writes Killip. "Going through these negatives again I found new images that I now liked, but at the time had overlooked or had not used for reasons that now mystify me." These alternate Isle of Man images--some 250 in total--became what Killip terms his "Isle of Man archive." Chris Killip: Isle of Man Revisited, a lavish, large-format, clothbound volume, maintains the order of the classic 1980 photobook but with some key changes: some of the original photographs have been replaced by unseen ones from Killip's "Isle of Man archive," and 30 new images have been added.
In Pirelli Work, taken at the famous tire manufacturer's plant, UK photographer Chris Killip (born 1946) documents the factory setting and the workers. One of the novelties of this work is in the lighting: the photographer mimicked fashion techniques, illuminating his subjects with three or four lights triggered by remote control, plus a light held on a pole away from the camera. "The workplace had become, in a real sense for me, a theater," he has said, "I embraced the look of these new photographs with their relation to fashion, film noir, and even Soviet Realism. For me this 'look' seemed a more telling way to record and document this enforced ritual." This clothbound monograph is the second edition of Pirelli Work, which was first published in 2006.
Chris Killip (born 1946) began photographing the people of Lynemouth seacoal beach in the north east of England in 1982, after nearly seven years of failed efforts to obtain their consent. During 1983 to 1984 he lived in a caravan on the seacoal camp, and documented the life, work and the struggle to survive on the beach, using his unflinching style of objective documentation. Fifty of the 124 images published here were first shown in 1984 at the Side Gallery in Newcastle and others were an important element of Killip's groundbreaking and legendary book In Flagrante, published four years later.
Published by Errata Editions. Text by Gerry Badger, John Berger, Sylvia Grant, Jeffrey Ladd.
Errata Editions' Books on Books series is an ongoing publishing project dedicated to making rare and out-of-print photography books accessible to students and photobook enthusiasts. These are not reprints or facsimiles but complete studies of the original books. Each volume in the series presents the entire content, page for page, of an original master bookwork which, up until now, has been too rare or expensive for most to experience. Through a mix of classic and contemporary titles, this series spans the breadth of photographic practice as it has appeared on the printed page and allows further study of the creation and meanings of these great works of art. Each volume in the series contains illustrations of every page in the original photobook, a new essay by an established writer on photography, production notes about the creation of the original edition and biographical and bibliographical information about each artist. Often referenced as the most important photobook to come out of England in the 1980s, Chris Killip's In Flagrante stands the test of time today. Published in 1988, In Flagrante shows the communities in Northern England that were devastated by the deindustrialization common to policies carried out by Margaret Thatcher and her predecessors starting in the mid-1970s. Books on Books 4 presents Killip's political yet lyric work along with a new essay, "Dispatches from a War Zone" by noted photo historian and critic Gerry Badger.
PUBLISHER Errata Editions
BOOK FORMAT Clth, 7.25 x 9 in. / 80 pgs / 52 duotone.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 2/1/2009 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2009 p. 46
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9781935004066TRADE List Price: $39.95 CAD $50.00
Chris Killip: In Flagrante Two
Chris Killip: Isle of Man Revisited
Chris Killip: Pirelli Work
Chris Killip: Seacoal
Chris Killip: In Flagrante