At a meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on Oct. 11, 2022, the following tribute to the life and service of the late Christopher David Killip was spread upon the permanent records of the Faculty.
Died: October 13, 2020. CHRIS Killip, who has died aged 74, was a pioneering documentary photographer, whose depictions of working-class communities in the north of England during the 1970s and 1980s captured a part of British society in the process of being marginalised or wiped out completely. Taken in vivid black and white, Killip’s images were a crucial counterpoint to the Thatcherite claim that there was no such thing as society. Images of the Tyneside shipyards captured great hulks towering over redbrick terraces. Workers coming off shift eye the camera with a mixture of suspicion and defiance. A skinhead youth scrunched up on a wall looks to be in despair.