[music evoking storytelling]
Female Narrator: This image documents the morning a young man named Bever was released from jail and returned to his village.
[music ends]
Chris Killip: He’d been locked up for a month, I think, and he’d walked into the village and I think he’d walked quite a long way, and it was about, just before 6 in the morning. And he came back to Skinningrove, and he’s just taking in the sun, it’s the first sun he’s seen for a bit, and it’s the sun coming up in the morning. And, I’m talking to him and photographing, but I could do that because I knew him.
He’d been in a pub fight the month before, and a policeman come towards him and he drew out his nightstick, and Bever looked at it, and he punched him right on the jaw, apparently. Of course, Bever’s very big and strong, and he knocked the policeman out and as a consequence he had to be locked up for four weeks. He’s not a bad fellow; it’s just circumstance.
Female Narrator: Killip has more compassion for Bever than the policeman.
Chris Killip: (laughs) Well. I mean, would you have stood there and got hit on the head? (laughs) Did he have a choice? Maybe he shouldn’t have hit him so hard. (laughs)
[music evoking storytelling]
Female Narrator: The intimacy the photographer shares with his subject is evident in how close he is and how comfortable Bever seems in his presence. Yet Bever’s pose seems deliberate.
Chris Killip: There’s a lot of misconceptions about portrait photography. I’d like my pictures of people to be interesting even though you don’t know the people in them. You want the picture to represent the complexity that you know that this person has.
[music ends]
