Monday, August 10, 2020

"The north of England really felt black and white in those days"

My native Newcastle was remarkably well served by documentary photographers in the 1970s and 1980s - just think of Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen in Byker, Chris Killip in Wallsend and South Shields, and Tish Murtha in Elswick.

When Mark Pinder returned to his home city in 1987, he moved into Scotswood, to the west of Murtha's Elswick, and began documenting what he found: an area crippled by a combination of industrial decline and Thatcherite policies.

In Pinder's words, the resulting images chart "the historical, political and economic changes that my home region has undergone", and as such were always likely to be of interest to Craig Atkinson of Cafe Royal Books. Newcastle West End: Elswick To Newburn certainly looks like a worthy addition to the imprint's treasure trove of a back catalogue.

No comments: