Chris Killip: Pirelli Work

by Chris Killip (Photographer)

Chris Killip, born in 1946 on the Isle of Man, is one of the most influential photographers and teachers to have come out of the United Kingdom. His work in the late 1970s and 1980s defined an era; it has received numerous prizes and is included in most major museum collections. Of The Pirelli Photographs , taken at the famous tire manufacturer's plant, he says, "I wanted to show the manufacturing process as clearly as I could, and to do so in this factory meant it would have to be lit... The workplace had become, in a real sense for me, a theater and I embraced the look of these new photographs with their relation to fashion, film noir, and even Soviet Realism. For me this Îlook' seemed a more telling way to record and document this enforced ritual."

Hardcover

First published November 21, 2008

About the author

Chris Killip is widely regarded as one of the most influential British photographers of his generation. 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. Other bodies of work include the series Isle of Man, Seacoal, Skinningrove and Pirelli.

In 1991 Killip was invited to be a Visiting Lecturer at the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard University. In 1994 he was made a tenured professor and was department chair from 1994-98. He retired from Harvard in December 2017 and continued to live in Cambridge, MA, USA, until his death in October, 2020.

His photographs feature in the permanent collections of many major institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Museum Folkwang, Essen; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Britain and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.