Chris Killip has just died. He was one of the great English documentary photographers. We published him several times. Photographer Soren Harbel sent us this text!
Jean Jacques Naudet
Chris Killip’s Masterful Youth on a Wall
15 years ago, I bought my first photograph by Chris Killip. The photograph represents a time in history, where a committed, but impressionable 30 year-old Killip witnessed the bottom of an economic cycle in Northern England, when industrial manufacturing was dying, and poverty and despair were the order of the day.
I relate to the photograph in my own personal way, as I am pretty sure that the young man in the photograph is more or less my age. It is difficult to say exactly, as Killip has not said anything about his subject, other than naming the photograph: Youth on Wall, Jarrow, Tyneside, 1976. In 1976, I was 15 years old, much the same, I think as the young man in this photograph. My father always said that I should always remember that we do not pick where we are born. The Youth on the Wall grew up at a time when things were tough, factories shutting, unions being busted, and the industrial heartland of the United Kingdom gutted.
