[music featuring acoustic guitar]
Female Narrator: The communities Chris Killip chose to photograph were often closed communities, leery of outsiders. It took him months, sometimes years, to earn the trust of the people who lived there. The people who collected seacoal in Lynemouth were especially suspicious because they claimed unemployment despite earning an income by selling the coal. If authorities became aware of their activities, their government benefits might be in jeopardy.
[music ends]
Chris Killip: I was photographing and I thought I wasn’t getting close enough. You can’t go in somebody’s caravan-this is a very confined interior-unless you know them. And also have a camera with you. So I bought a caravan and moved onto the place and that made a very big difference.
Female Narrator: For more than a year, Chris camped out in his own caravan on Lynemouth beach, where the seacoalers also lived and worked. His caravan became a meeting place.
Chris Killip: I was very famous for making cups of tea. It was like my studio, really. People would sit down and the entrance fee to my place was I’d be photographing you.
[music featuring acoustic guitar]
Female Narrator: The caravan images are intimate, domestic, everyday.
Chris Killip: It’s about what happened to the people it happened to. It’s the immediacy about what happens to these people at that time in this place.
[music ends]
