Chris Killip: In Flagrante: Books on Books No. 4

by Gerry Badger, John Berger (Text), Sylvia Grant (Text)

Chris Killip's "In Flagrante" is often cited as the most important photographic book on England in the 1980s. Published in 1988, this work portrays the steady decline of communities in Northern England--former manufacturing powerhouses that were gradually compromised by the policies of Margaret Thatcher and her predecessors from the mid-1970s onward. Killip's black-and-white photographs were mostly taken with 4 x 5 film, and provide an unflinching look at these disenfranchised northern towns and the poverty visited upon them by deindustrialization. "Books on Books" No. 4 reproduces Killip's lyrical work alongside John Berger and Sylvia Grant's original essay plus a specially commissioned essay, "Dispatches from a War Zone," by acclaimed photo historian Gerry Badger, which explores the social context in which Killip's evocative images were made.

Genres: Photography, Art

108 pages, Hardcover

First published October 10, 2001

Reviews

[Zioluc · Rating 3 out of 5]

Carrellata sui lavori di Killip, interessante ma il formato è come sempre troppo piccolo per apprezzare come si deve.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book in the late 80s/early 90s, so this edition (the only one I could find on GR) seems wrong. Anyway if it's the same book it is a series of photos set in England's North East during the Thatcherite crisis of shut mines and unemployment showing the hopelessness of the young and old in those communities worst effected. I remember seeing a discussion on TV about this book and one commentator accused Killip of setting up the shots, and general mendacity. They're definitely making a political point, but they still portray an accurate truth, I think - my family on my mother's side are from Jarrow, near the communities portrayed. Maybe I'm just gullible.