century and came to an end with Thatcher’s reign in Britain from 1979 to 1990. His work thus provides greater context and understanding to the effects of industrial capitalism on not just one place and people but different places and peoples.
Killip died on the 13th of October in 2020 from lung cancer. He was, without question, a prolific and accomplished photographer. He had shown around the world, curated exhibitions, directed the Visual and Environmental Studies
Department at Harvard University, wrote extensively, appeared on radio and television shows, and was the subject of numerous videos. Previously mentioned was his winning the Henri Cartier-Bresson Award (for In Flagrante), and he was also shortlisted for the Deutsche Borse Photography Prize. Not bad for a person who left formal education behind at age 16.
While we have attempted to articulate one interpretation of his legacy, Killip’s full legacy cannot be determined solely through his achievement, or the unique photographs and stories left behind. It must be viewed through the lens of the relationships he built, the friendships he shared, and the feelings he held. In each of the places he worked, Chris engaged with the local community: for example, he had young men sell his magazines so they could make an extra buck. But arguably, it was his sensitivity to the characters he documented that set him apart.
Already mentioned was Killip’s effort in creating an album of photographs for David’s mother, after her son drowned in a boating accident. But unless you dig a bit, you might miss the fact
Chris was at a loss of words when
accompanying and photographing the above-mentioned child, Simon, whose father
also drowned – not knowing in fact whether he
could ever show the photographs as they were so intimate. Unless you dig a bit, you would not know it was only at the end of his own life that Chris felt able to publish the pictures of David and Leso: and, that before he did, he personally posted an edition of the photograph through every letterbox in the village.
You might also fail to realize that Killip maintained a long friendship with the places and peoples he photographed, visiting across the years. You might also fail to know the joy he felt when showing photographs to the once young men who had become old, with bald heads and beer bellies, hearing their laughter and seeing the pride they held when pointing
themselves out to friends. Never did Killip
experience the frustration or anger that Evans
did when returning to a community of tenant farmers whose life he documented, as Evans never bothered to even give them a copy of the book published about their lives.
It is for this reason many argue Killip’s legacy could be that he lived well enough and long enough to achieve what others ascribed to him: that he wanted to affirm the value of lives he grew close to or, as he once put it, ‘had history done to them.’ Chris had, over the course of time, witnessed what kept and sustained communities as he ‘also stayed long enough to see their loss.'.14
Killip is survived by Matthew, a son he had with the photographer Markéta Luskačová. In 2000, he married Mary Halpenny, who also worked at Harvard. He was 74.
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