Alison with Two Carts, Seacoal Beach, Lynemouth, Northumberland, 1982-1984, Chris Killip, gelatin silver print
Courtesy of and © Chris Killip
Transcript
Chris Killip: There’s a story behind that picture.
[poignant music featuring guitar]
Female Narrator: Artist Chris Killip.
Chris Killip: That’s Alison. What she’s doing is a very difficult thing to do. It takes a great deal of balance. I can’t stand up like that. And she’s leading another horse, as well as the horse that she’s driving.
[music ends]
Female Narrator: Two years after this photo was taken, Alison’s life was irrevocably altered.
Chris Killip: Alison was with her boyfriend. She went to his caravan to change and she said, “I’m going for a shower.” And 20 minutes went by and he realized she hadn’t come back, she hadn’t come out. He went back to the caravan and he couldn’t open the door of the shower. In the end, he had to break the door down. Allison was unconscious on the floor.
Female Narrator: Toxic fumes had leaked from the heater and caused Alison to lose consciousness.
Chris Killip: Unfortunately, she was unconscious for a bit too long and she had some brain damage, and her personality changed. And she became sort of quite moody and quite angry and she even started to swear, which she had never done in her whole life.
The family were told to sue the manufacturers of the heating equipment for the shower because it was faulty, which they did.
Female Narrator: In order to argue their case, Alison’s family had to prove she was unequivocally different as a result of this accident.
[music evoking intimate setting]
Chris Killip: They showed my photograph, which is like a circus act, the thing that she’s doing, and now she had no sense of balance at all, so it was proof of one of the ways that she’d changed. Because she could prove she had a fantastic sense of balance, ultimately she won the case, which is quite interesting. Photographs are very evidential.