Chris Killip: Askam-in-Furness
Supported by Martin Parr Foundation and the Chris Killip Photography Trust
2025
Chris Killip’s poignant photographic series Askam-in-Furness, shown in its entirety for the first time, marks our first major exhibition in our newly refurbished building! The exhibition documents the coastal village of Askam during the social and political upheaval of the early 1980s. It is supported by the Martin Parr Foundation the Chris Killip Photography Trust.
Chris Killip (1946-2020) is one of the UK’s most important post-war documentary photographers. Known for his documentation of working-class life in Northern England, 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 interconnectedness. The body of work offers an important record of a community shaped by industry, landscape, and resilience.
The exhibition features twenty photographs from 1982, shown together for the first time close to the location where they were taken. Modern silver gelatin prints, hand-printed by Killip himself, have been loaned by the Chris Killip Photography Trust and the Martin Parr Foundation.
The exhibition also includes unseen digital scans from negatives and an archive installation from our new community research project, reconnecting with some of the subjects shown in the photographs.
Location:
Signal Film & Media
Cooke’s Studios
102-104 Abbey Road
Barrow-in-Furness
Cumbria
LA14 5QR
Exhibition Times:
Friday 19th September – Saturday 1st November | Tue – Sat | 10am – 5pm
“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.” Martin Parr
“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
“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. We hope our new research project, which runs alongside this exhibition, will uncover new stories that reveal more of Chris Killip’s time in Askam.”
– Phil Northcott, Curator, Signal Film and Media
“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.”
– Loren Slater, Co-Director Signal Film and Media
Chris Killip ‘Askam-in-Furness’, is presented alongside ‘ONE YEAR! Photographs from the Miners’ Strike 1984–85’, featuring work by Chris Killip. These two exhibitions launch the re-opening of our newly redeveloped building, Cooke’s Studios. The project is a £1.4 million capital refurbishment, funded by ACE and the UK Government Community Ownership Fund.