Killip and Smith are known for documenting both the people and places affected by industrial decline in the North East England from the late 1970s to mid-1980s. Their work was last displayed together in the UK in a two-artist exhibition, ‘Another Country’, at the Serpentine, London, in 1985. This new exhibition was conceived in 2019 as a collaboration between the photographers before Killip’s death - it will now go ahead as a tribute to their work and enduring friendship.
The black-and-white photographs document the North East in a period when heavy industry was still thriving, followed by its devastating collapse. Killip and Smith each selected 20 images for the exhibition taken between 1975 and 1987 in locations from Skinningrove, just south of Middlesbrough to Lynemouth, just north of Newcastle. These images depict an environment that for centuries had evolved from the industrial revolution and the photographers documented the individuals and communities whose lives depended on heavy industry, people who were facing a politically forced change to the landscape and the ways of life that had been settled for generations.
