#18 CAMERA Book Review: Chris Killip - The Station

A quick look through a new newsprint edition of The Station by Chris Killip.

Chris Killip's The Station documents the anarcho punk music venue in Gateshead during the summer of 1985, a period marked by high youth unemployment and the social consequences of the 1984 to 1985 miners' strike. The Station was a collectively run rehearsal space, performance venue and social centre that provided an important meeting place for young people involved in the local punk scene. Killip began photographing there after hearing about the venue while documenting nightlife in Newcastle, returning regularly over several months to produce a sustained record of a community that found identity, belonging and creative expression through music. Although the photographs were made in 1985, they remained largely unseen until contact sheets were rediscovered by Killip's son in 2016, leading to the publication of the book by Steidl in 2020.

Rather than concentrating on performances alone, Killip photographed the physical intensity of the venue and the relationships between the people who gathered there. His large format black and white photographs capture concerts, rehearsals, dancing and moments between performances, revealing The Station as a cultural space shaped by collective organisation rather than commercial entertainment. The work expands Killip's wider documentation of Britain's industrial north by recording a generation whose opportunities had been limited by economic decline but who created their own forms of community through independent music and alternative culture. The Station stands as an important photographic record of the British anarcho punk movement and the social conditions that helped define it during the mid 1980s.

Chris Killip

#chriskillip #photography #photobook #punk #punkrock

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