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Chris Killip’s poignant photographic series ‘Askam-in-Furness’, documenting a coastal village during the social and political upheaval of the early 1980s, is set to be shown complete for the first time in September, and includes previously unseen work from the Manx photographer.
Signal Film and Media presents the complete series of ‘Askam-in-Furness’ by Chris Killip (1946-2020), one of the UK’s most important post-war documentary photographers. Capturing the place and people of Askam-in-Furness through a distinctive series of photographs, the exhibition opens in September 2025 in the nearby town of Barrow-in-Furness, at Signal Film and Media’s newly refurbished Cooke’s Studios gallery. It is curated by Phil Northcott and supported by the Chris Killip Photography Trust and the Martin Parr Foundation.
Born in Douglas, Isle of Man in 1946, Chris Killip left school at age sixteen and joined the only four star hotel on the Isle of Man as a trainee hotel manager. In June 1964 he decided to pursue photography full time. He worked as a freelance assistant for various photographers in London from 1966-69.
In 1969, after seeing his very first exhibition of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, he decided to return to photograph in the Isle of Man. In 1972 he received a commission from The Arts Council of Great Britain to photograph Huddersfield and Bury St Edmunds for the exhibition ‘Two Views — Two Cities’.
In 1975, he moved to live in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on a two year fellowship as the Northern Arts Photography Fellow. He was a founding member, exhibition curator and advisor of Side Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, as well as its director, from 1977-79.
In 1989 he received the Henri Cartier Bresson Award and in 1991 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 died in 2020. His work is featured in the permanent collections of major institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; George Eastman House; Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco; Museum Folkwang, Essen; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Following his visit to Askam in Furness in 1982, Chris Killip included a selection of the photographs in his exhibition Askam and Skinningrove, which opened at Side Gallery, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in 1983 and then toured. Some of the images were later used in his seminal photobook, In Flagrante, his documentation of the de-industrialisation of Northern England 1973 -1985. A selection was included in the full-career retrospective at The Photographers’ Gallery in 2022 and Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead in 2023.
“History is what’s written, my pictures are what happened. It’s like a people’s history – the people who history happened to.” Chris Killip.
The exhibition ‘Askam-in-Furness’ features twenty photographs from 1982, shown together for the first time close to the location where they were taken. The modern silver gelatin prints were hand-printed by Killip himself and have been loaned by the Chris Killip Photography Trust and the Martin Parr Foundation.
The exhibition also includes fifty-nine digital scans from negatives and an archive installation of previously unseen images by Chris Killip, taken during his time in Askam-in-Furness. These images were recently uncovered by Signal Film and Media during a research project with the local Askam community to reconnect with some of the subjects shown in the ‘Askam-in-Furness’ series.
Chris Killip ‘Askam-in-Furness’ launches the re-opening of the newly redeveloped Signal Film and Media gallery within their newly redeveloped arts centre, Cooke’s Studios, which is located in Barrow-in-Furness in the North West of England. The project is a £1.4 million capital refurbishment, funded by ACE and the UK Government Community Ownership Fund.
Known for his documentation of working-class life in Northern England, Chris Killip spent time in the West Coast Cumbrian village of ‘Askam-in-Furness’ in 1981 and 1982. His ability to immerse himself within a community and gain the trust of the people who lived there led him to create this series of intimate, life-affirming portraits alongside urban, rural and coastal features showing their symbiosis and interconnectedness.
Subjects include a young boy clutching a pigeon, cows gently ambling past Linda’s clothes store and the unbridged Askam pier. ‘Askam-in-Furness’ is a body of work offering an important record of a community shaped by industry, landscape, and resilience and represents a poignant record of a North West coastal village during the social and political upheaval of the early 1980s.
Martin Parr said: “Chris is without a doubt one of the key players in postwar British photography. He led the way in which he would befriend the communities he photographed, and this created the intimacy and strength of his images.”
Some of the images were published in Killip’s seminal photobook, ‘In Flagrante’, his documentation of the de-industrialisation of Northern England 1973 -1985.
Phil Northcott, Curator, Signal Film and Media, said: “These images offer us an important and poetic record of a community shaped by industry, landscape, and resilience. While selected works in the series have been shown internationally, the complete series has never been shown in its entirety since Chris Killip shared his work with the Askam community soon after he’d made it, in 1982. We know that Chris Killip developed a close relationship with members of the community and gave the portrait subjects their portraits to hang in their own homes. Coincidentally, one of these is my friend Lee, who was photographed in ‘Boy with Pigeon’ by Killip and given the print. Our new research project, which runs alongside this exhibition, is uncovering new stories that reveal more of Chris Killip’s time in Askam.”
Loren Slater, Co-Director Signal Film and Media, said: “Following the £1.4m redevelopment of our studios in Barrow-in-Furness, we wanted to reopen with an exhibition that spoke to the strength, spirit and beauty of the Furness region and its community, in the context of the social and political landscape of the UK. For us, it had to be Chris Killip and ‘Askam-in-Furness.’ We’re delighted to be bringing this important series home to the area where it was created, marking an artistic moment in time as we pave the way for our new commission series to come.”
Work by Chris Killip also features in ‘ONE YEAR! Photographs from the miners’ Strike 1984–85’, a second exhibition showing alongside ‘Chris Killip - Askam-in-Furness’. Curated by Isaac Blease and from the Martin Parr Foundation Collection, this exhibition marks the 40th anniversary of the year-long industrial action that defined a generation. It complements the Chris Killip show, exploring the role photography played in documenting and resisting the pit closures.
‘ONE YEAR! Photographs from the miners’ strike 1984–85’ is a touring show featuring work by Brenda Prince, John Sturrock, Jenny Matthews, Roger Tiley, John Harris, Chris Killip, Imogen Young, Phil Winnard and Howard Sooley, alongside rare posters, badges, records and publications. The exhibited works span the full year of the strike and cover a variety of approaches, from photo-journalism to photo-montage, as well as more vernacular uses of photographs such as the albums compiled by Philip Winnard, himself a striking miner.
Depicted throughout are the infamous clashes between police and flying pickets but also the camaraderie between those on strike and the activities of support groups such as Women Against Pit Closures. Collectively, the materials speak to both the power and contradictions of photography as a tool of solidarity, propaganda, and people’s history.
Chris Killip: Askam-in-Furness and ONE YEAR! Photographs from the miners’ strike 1984–85 are presented by Signal Film and Media at Cooke’s Studios, Barrow-in-Furness, from Fri 19 Sept to Sat 1 Nov 2025.
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Header Image: Duke st, Askam-in-Furness, 1982. © Chris Killip Photography Trust/Magnum Photos
