Those awake at the end of Newsnight one evening in late January, might have spotted a montage of Mik’s images celebrating merchant seafarers in the North East. Your programme secretary immediately leapt into action and EHHPS is delighted to welcome Mik Critchlow to present some of his work.
Mik is a Social Documentary photographer based in the North East of England and for 40 years he has photographed his home town of Ashington, Northumberland and its people. He will talk about his photographic influences, his working style and methods, commissioned projects, and show images ranging across his career.
His work is in the tradition of photographers recording social life and changing times in their own communities and he produced a series of evocative monochrome photo-essay in the 1980s and 1990s such as ‘Pitheads’, ‘Whippets’ , ‘Seacoalers’ and 'Seamen'.
Since 1980, Mik has had an ongoing association with Side Gallery in Newcastle Upon Tyne which is Britain’s only gallery dedicated to the work of concerned documentary photography.
About Mik:
Mik Critchlow (b.1955) is a social documentary photographer based in the North East of England. Mik has worked on long term community-based projects for over forty years. On seeing an exhibition of paintings in 1977 by the‘Pitmen Painters’- a group of Ashington men brought together in 1934 by the Workers Educational Association for Art Appreciation classes, he realised the value of art as
a social document, the visual representation of everyday life, by one’s own knowledge and personal experiences. In the same year, he began a long term photography project which documented his home town of Ashington Northumberland. The son of a miner, he has worked within the community with a deep-rooted empathy for the townsfolk, documenting the area and it’s people during a rapid period of social and environmental change.
Work is held in public and private collections and has been exhibited & published widely including:
Side Gallery, Amber-Side Collection, Northumberland Archives, Brunel University, Museums Northumberland, Durham Art Gallery,
Arts Council England, Laing Gallery, Northumberland
Libraries , MCC Museum, Northern Arts, The British Journal of Photography, Amateur Photographer, Creative Camera, Museums Journal.
Recent exhibitions include: ‘Forever Amber’ - Laing Art Gallery 2014, ‘The Share’ - Northern Rock Gallery 2014, ‘About The North - Imagined Dialogues’ - Side Gallery 2018, ‘Pitmen Painters Unseen’ - Woodhorn Museum 2018, ‘WORK+WORKERS’ - Side Gallery 2019.
In 2019 his book Coal Town was published by Bluecoat Press
https://bluecoatpress.co.uk/product/coal-town/
Website: WWW.MIKCRITCHLOW.COM
Twitter: @mikcritchlow
