June 17, 2024
The catalogue for the exhibition 20/20: Chris Killip / Graham Smith at Augusta Edwards Fine Art 12 October-06 November 2022 now republished to accompany the exhibition 20/20: Chris Killip / Graham Smith at Martin Parr Foundation
The black-and-white photographs in this book document the North East in a period when heavy industry was still thriving, followed by an unforeseen and devastating collapse. Killip and Smith each selected 20 images for the exhibition taken between 1975 and 1987 in locations from Skinningrove, just south of Middlesbrough to Lynemouth, just north of Newcastle. The images depict an environment that for centuries has evolved from the industrial revolution. The photographers documented the individuals and communities whose lives depended on heavy industry, people who were facing a politically forced change to the landscape and their ways of life that had been settled for generations.
Killip and Smith first met in the summer of 1975 when their paths converged through Amber Films, a film and photography collective in Newcastle upon Tyne. A close and lifelong friendship followed and in 1985 they created their seminal exhibition, ‘Another Country’. In 1991, their works were shown alongside three other photographers at MoMA, New York, under the controversial title ‘British Photography from the Thatcher Years’. Following a backlash from some UK newspapers andthe effect it had on individuals and their community portrayed in Smith’s images, he stepped back from the public arena ofphotography. As a consequence, Smith’s work is not as widely known as it merits. Killip, who was teaching at Harvard University in this period, went on to exhibit widely.
Title: 20/20: Chris Killip / Graham Smith
Publisher: Augusta Edwards, 2022
Authors: Graham Smith and David Campany
Photographers: Chris Killip & Graham Smith
Graphic Design: Chantal Fabres
Format: Hardback
Size: 26 x 20 cm, 76 pages
To puchase a copy please contact: info@augustaedwards.com
May 2, 2024
Chris Killip is widely regarded as one of the most influential British photographers. Skinningrove is the last publication Killip worked on before his passing in 2020. Known for his passion for photography books, he oversaw all elements of this book, which features many unseen images. We are very proud to now release this unique publication into the world.
Born in the Isle of Man in 1946, he began his career as a commercial photographer before turning to his own work in the late 1960s. His book, ‘In Flagrante’, a collection of photographs made in the North East of England during the 1970s and early 1980s, is now recognized as a landmark work of documentary photography.
The village of Skinningrove lies on the North-East coast of England, hidden in a steep valley it veers away from the main road and faces out onto the North Sea. The photographs that Chris Killip made of its, fiercely independent hard working-class community, between 1982 and 1984 are possibly Killip’s most intimate work.
“Like a lot of tight-knit fishing communities, it could be hostile to strangers, especially one with a camera. “Now Then” is the standard greeting in Skinningrove; a challenging substitute for the more usual, “Hello.” The place had a definite edge, and it took time for this stranger to be tolerated. My greatest ally in gaining acceptance was Leso (Leslie Holliday), the most outgoing of the younger fishermen. Leso and I never talked about what I was doing there, but when someone questioned my presence, he would intercede and vouch for me with, “He’s OK.” This simple endorsement was enough.
“I last photographed in Skinningrove in 1984, and didn’t return for thirty years. When I did I was shocked by how it had changed, as only one boat was still fishing. For me, Skinningrove’s sense of purpose was bound up in its collective obsession with the sea. Skinningrove fishermen believed that the sea in front of them was their private territory, theirs alone. Without the competitive energy that came from fishing, the place seemed like a pale reflection of its former self.” - Chris Killip
"In Skinningrove, he felt he came close to catching a poet’s sense of the sublime in images of hard lives on the shoreline." Tim Adams, The Guardian
Details:
Published — 9th May 2024
Cover — Hard back / Tip-on / Foil stamped
Pages — 104
Size — 300x220mm
To purchase a copy of the book please click here
April 15, 2024
Karen Knorr's Country Life explores attitudes within the British aristocracy in the 1990s through image and text. Knor's refined images were taken in London, Scotland and Oxfordshire in domestic interiors and gardens laid out according to the picturesque canons of the eighteenth century.
The work was originally commissioned by The Photographers’ Gallery for a group exhibit entitled Britain in 1984.
"Although I was asked to document changes that new technologies had created, I chose instead to refer to the attitudes and activities of the British landed gentry, These were aspects of Britain in 1984 that had changed little. Country Life, like my earlier works Belgravia (1979-81) and Gentlemen (1981-83), parodies class attitudes, the received ideas of the 1980’s under Thatcherism. (Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister 1979-1990) This series differs, in that I appropriate the still life and landscape genres to plot the traces of the leisure class. Nature, like the objects photographed, is property. Objects inside and outside serve to commemorate past family histories. Looking at Country Life today the development of labour’s classless society is still a project to be striven for.. Social networks based on favour, privilege and accidents of birth continue despite new technologies and progress." Karen Knorr
Published — April 2024
Cover — Hard back / Tip-in / Foil stamped / Transparent PVC Jacket
Size — 350mm × 280mm
To purchase a copy of the book please click here
April 2, 2024 - The Guardian
March 25, 2024 - The Times
March 25, 2024 - Tim Adams, The Guardian
December 1, 2023 - Richard B. Woodward, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/arts/elliott-erwitt-whose-photos-are-famous-and-often-funny-dies-at-95.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
November 8, 2023 - Louis Siroy, The Guardian
October 15, 2023 - British Journal of Photography
May 30, 2023 - Pejman Faratin, The Guardian