May 5th 1981, Housing Estate, North Shields, Tyneside, negative, 1981; print, 2014, Chris Killip, gelatin silver print
Courtesy of and © Chris Killip
Transcript
[music evoking reflection, featuring guitar]
Female Narrator: Photographer Chris Killip thinks a lot about how time influences a photograph and its meaning.
Chris Killip: I was in the darkroom on that day when Mrs. Thatcher came on the radio and said, “I have to announce that the hunger striker Bobby Sands is dead.” That’s all she said, and I wanted to do something.
[music ends]
Female Narrator: A member of the Irish Republican Army, or IRA, Bobby Sands was held in the notorious Northern Irish prison commonly referred to as the Maze. While imprisoned he led other IRA members on a hunger strike, refusing food to protest their treatment as criminals rather than political prisoners. After fasting for 66 days, Sands was the first to die in the 1981 Irish hunger strike.
Chris Killip: I left the darkroom, and I knew this graffiti was on this wall, in this housing project in North Shields, so I drove over to the housing project, I took about three or four exposures, and this is the one that I used.
Female Narrator: But Killip chose not to include this image in the first printing of In Flagrante in 1988.
Chris Killip: I thought it was too much, the awfulness of the graffiti. Greedy Irish Pig.
I felt it was just too negative, too nihilistic, too bleak at the time.[music evoking reflection, featuring guitar]
Female Narrator: Decades later, Killip changed his mind.
Chris Killip: When I looked at it again, I thought, now it’s just part of history, and it also illustrates quite clearly the extent of religious prejudice that's on this estate.
Female Narrator: The image also chronicles the social upheaval of the time.
Chris Killip: If you look more carefully at the photograph, you can see that some apartments have got fire damage. People are burning themselves out in order to be rehoused. And then, if you look a little more, you'll see there's washing hanging on a line. So, other people are trying to just live their daily and ordinary lives.
[music ends]