SuperMac, Elswick Kids (1978) - Tish Murtha (c) Ella Murtha, all rights reserved. Photo: Tish Murtha
Nicknamed at one time ‘The Demon Snapper’ for her controversial advocacy, working class photographer Tish Murtha powerfully captured the impact of Thatcherism on the north east of England.
Extraordinary photographs of youth in late '70s early ‘80s Newcastle in the UK have in recent years started to come fully into the light, thanks to the photographer’s daughter.
She was driven to document the effects of deindustrialisation on working class communities, with enormous rates of unemployment. Her work has a remarkable empathy, in particular for young people. An empathy born from being one of them. Murtha was the third of ten children in a large Irish-Catholic family, with her siblings and community there before the camera.
Yet tragically Murtha was ultimately unable to escape the poverty and inequality she exposed. She died in poverty in 2013 of a brain aneurysm, unable to make a living from her photography. Since her work has been acquired by the Tate and National Portrait Gallery, and in March last year a Newcastle housing development opened in her name, the moniker selected by kids from a local primary school.
Murtha’s life and work are the subject of director Paul Sng’s new documentary Tish. Sng has previously directed films about band Sleaford Mods and opposition to the UK government’s austerity programme, the shortage of social housing and punk icon Poly Styrene.
Yet Sng’s film is also a portrait of a family, and at its heart is Murtha’s daughter Ella Murtha.
Karen On Overturned Chair, Youth Unemployment (1981) - Tish Murtha (c) Ella Murtha, all rights reserved. Photo: Ella Murtha
Tish follows Murtha as she interviews her uncles and aunts, her mother's friends, and other key figures in her life, like Magnum photographer David Hurn who accepted Murtha into his fledgling documentary photography course in 1976.
Hurn says that, at the interview, when he asked the then 20-year-old what she wanted to photograph, she replied, “I want to learn to take photographs of policemen kicking kids.” She was in.
Glenn on the wall, Elswick Kids (1978) Tish Murtha (c) Ella Murtha, all rights reserved. Photo: Tish Murtha
“It was just the two of us, Tish and Ella; we were a team,” Ella writes on their website. “I grew up with her pictures as our wallpaper and was often in the darkroom with her as a child. She would explain what she was doing, letting me help, and it felt so magical watching these black-and-white images appear that we had made together.”
Today Ella Murtha manages the archive of her late mother’s work, and has championed it through publishing books, and advocating for the work to be recognised.
Kenilworth Road Kids, Cruddas Park, Juvenile Jazz Bands (1979) - Tish Murtha (c) Ella Murtha, all rights reserved. Photo: Tish Murtha
Tish Murtha was born and raised in the Elswick area of Newcastle on Tyne at a time when the mines and steelworks were being closed. There was record unemployment, and the images she took of young people in the area are reminiscent of those of bombed out areas of Britain after the second world war. Yet Murtha's images focus on the defiance and hope of the young, making their own worlds in its midst.
As a child Tish Murtha found a camera in one of the derelict houses she and her brothers and sisters explored. It had no film inside it, but she took to carrying it as a way to protect herself and her family.
Returning to Elswick later, she began to take pictures for real with photo series like Youth Unemployment (1981) and Juvenile Jazz Bands (1979).
Tish premieres on Sky Arts Sunday night before being available on demand.
