Twenty-four photographs by Chris Killip currently on view at Amador Gallery offer the photographer's experience of England's industrial decline under Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990. His selection of images (four of them vintage prints) from this period, many of which originally appeared in his 1988 photobook In Flagrante, create an unalloyed feeling of despair for lives wrecked by the government's de-industrialization policies.

Left: Youth, Jarrow, Tynside, 1976. Right: Bever's First Day Out, Skinningrove, North Yorkshire, 1982. Copyright Chris Killip, courtesy Amador Gallery.

A throng of people line up outside a shop during a bakers' strike in 1977; five boys climb a brick fence across from a partly burned-out, but still inhabited, apartment block; a young man in fishing boots, seen from behind, looks uncertainly to the distance as if seeing a bleak future. In each of these images, the photographer has become something of a vessel for the experiences of others. In the Foreword to his book, Killip wrote, "To the people in these photographs I am superfluous, my life does not depend on their struggle, only my hopes. This is a subjective book about my time in England. I take what isn't mine and I covet other peoples lives. The photographs can tell you more about me than about what they describe. The book is a fiction about metaphor."

A photograph of a grimacing young man, whose clenched fists seem to strike his head, recalls an iconic image also in the book depicting skinheads at a benefit dance for striking miners - and London Calling, The Clash song that became closely identified with Thatcher's England. Two photographs from Skinningrove, a fishing village where Killip spent a fair amount of time getting to know his subjects, create a palpable sense of fear or apprehension. In Bever's First Day Out (above right), gallerist Paul Amador says, the subject had driven all night to get back to his friends when he was released from prison. Here, Bever expresses a complex set of emotions that convey an undercurrent of violence. By comparison, the few tender moments depicted in the collection, such as one of a couple seated with their sleeping child amid windblown bits of trash at a miners benefit event, become even more poignant.

4 + 20 Photographs, Chris Killip’s first solo exhibition in the United States, continues at Amador Gallery through November 13^th. Tonight the gallery will be open until 8:00 pm during 57^th Street Gallery Night; refreshments will be served. The Fuller Building, 41 East 57^th Street, 6^th Floor, NY, NY.

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