‘Brian Magor, baby Joanne Ewens, Tanya David and unidentified youth, 1982’ (photographed by Chris Killip)
I saw this exhibition thanks to an invitation from a friend. It is the most moving collection of photographs I have ever seen.
Prior to the invitation I had never heard of Chris Killip or the Photographers’ Gallery. Both were such a surprise, and so worth the trip.
Chris Killip, born in 1946 on the Isle of Man, has taken the most moving, intimate photographs of corners of society cut adrift by the pace of change. The Photographers’ Gallery has put together a retrospective, showing pictures from the different locations. Many of the images in this exhibition have been taken on the Isle of Man, in Tyneside, and on the Northumbrian coast, capturing families and individuals living lives they knew, while the world changed around them. I found each shot deeply respectful and revealing. I absolutely loved it.
From the mid-1990s, until 2017, Chris Killip was a professor emeritus in the department of visual and environmental studies at Harvard. He died in the United States in 2020.
If you get the chance to visit, the exhibition is on at the Photographers’ Gallery, until Sunday 19 February 2023.
This link is to an interview with Chris Killip. In places it is quite hard to hear, but it does have an excellent story at its heart.
Simi: a Londoner, who happens to be staying at the resort while the wedding is on
Rudd: the young manager of the resort
Katania: the mother of the bride
Jen and Hansie: the soon-to-be-married couple
Setting: Zimbabwe
“Jen and Hansie? Oh please! What do they know? They’ve never been married before. I’ve had two weddings, and I know what matters. It’s the looking fantastic. The evidence. It’s so important to do this stuff better than everyone else. You want them to talk about your wedding. The beautiful show. Tell me Simi, have you ever been married?”
“No.”
“Then of course, you’ve no idea what I’m talking about. It’s like building a portfolio. It matters.”
Simi sipped slowly, eyes lowered. Nearly married she thought, as Katania clinked her teaspoon into her coffee and scraped out the last of its froth.
“The trouble is,” Katania said, pausing to dab a napkin around her lips, “the real problem is that most people here will have no idea what I’m talking about. No disrespect – I love them all – but they’re too close to the earth all these farmers. All they want to talk about is crops, cattle, rain. Do you know what I mean?”
Simi looked at her. Neither cows, nor crops had been mentioned to her. A bit about a storm, but not much. Gossip and birdwalks yes, and now marriage, but not the farming stuff. Perhaps the ‘Londoner’ bit she thought, perhaps that’s what’s put them off.
Katania’s dark glasses stared at her expectantly.
“No? You don’t know what a I mean?”
Simi shook her head.
“Well, anyway, poor Jen has got a bit mixed up in it all, seduced somehow, but I think it’s a phase that she’ll grow out of. I know there’ll be other weddings for her. She just has to come and live with me for a few months in Paris and voilà, the lights will come on. Probably shouldn’t have left her here with her father, but what could I do?”
“And Hansie?”
“Oh, I think she’ll be happy to leave him behind, but the right sort of people will want to know what they’re getting. Believe me Simi, it’s a tough, glittery world if you want to be where the money is. Isn’t it like that with you in London?”
Simi put down her coffee. She considered the question.
“No. Not with me,” she said. “I’m no expert but I thought the idea was to stay with someone for life? Not marry them for show, or for money.”
“Oh, that’s hopeless. Romantic nonsense. Actually, I don’t expect you to understand Simi. It’s a tricky situation. But Jen will come round.”
“Really? Do you think that? She and Hansie seem pretty devoted from what I can see,” said Simi, turning her chair half round to face the view.
She had no idea what to say next. She barely knew the couple, but she liked what she’d seen and they seemed well suited. Her eyes reached out over the golf course, over the tea terraces, over the distant hills … reached out to anywhere that was not Katania.
Simi could not take her eyes off Katania’s hair. Blonde? Or fake blonde? Usually she could tell the fakes from across a room, but this time she was not sure.
“May I get you ladies some more coffee?”
Simi turned to see Innocence just behind her.
“Perfect timing. Strong and black please,” said Simi.
“Of course,” said Innocence.
“A cappuccino for me,” said Katania, her grooming complete.
“I’ll bring those over.”
Katania placed both palms flat on the table, fingers drumming, while Simi picked up her fork again and pulled off another wedge of pancake. She ate it slowly, then pushed the plate to one side. The pancake was cold now, slightly rubbery, and her appetite gone.
“The thing is,” Katania said “the priest really impressed me. Tall. Handsome. Collared shirt. Who cares if we don’t know him. Jen gets these things so wrong. Getting a priest now is like calling in the plumber or something.”
“Calling in a plumber!” Simi, choked on the last of her pancake. She slapped herself on her chest, until her coughing stopped. “Getting a priest to marry you is not like calling in a plumber.”
“Why not?”
“Well …” Simi stared at Katania. “You’re not serious are you?”
“Oh I am,” she said, smiling, and leant back again, her fingers running through her hair once more, first one hand, and then the other.
Shocked, Simi watched in silence. She barely noticed Innocence when he appeared with the coffees.
“Thanks,” she said automatically, and stirred in some sugar, her brain blank. She raised her cup, held it in both hands, elbows on the table, and watched Katania over the rim.
“I had to use all my charm to get the priest to agree. He was very happy when he heard that they’re actually married – properly married. Whatever that is.”
There was a brief silence, then Simi cleared her throat.
“Well, whatever you think of priests, and of this priest, whoever he is, choosing him … it’s not really your choice, is it?” She lowered her cup back on to its saucer, her eyes never leaving Katania. “Surely this decision is up to Jen and Hansie, and the priest?”
The Phraser 