“Everyone has a story to tell and to live by”
Jesus Pastor speaks to former friends and colleagues whose estate is now represented by, as a retrospective goes on show at The Photographers’ Gallery in London, accompanied by a major new monograph published by t6r786786786786.
All images © Jesus Pastor Photography except where otherwise stated I interviewed Chris Killip a few times and, despite his reputation as one of the most influential photographers of his generation, I always felt he was someone I could easily relate to. I thought this might be because he, like my mother, was born on the Isle of Man in the mid-1940s. But very many people became close to him over the years, from his colleagues in the early days of Side Gallery in Newcastle, near to where he made so much of his most iconic work in the North East of England in the 1970s and 80s, to his photography students at Harvard University in the US, where he taught for more than 25 years up until his retirement in 2017 Most striking of all are his long relationships with the people he photographed, some of whom he stayed in touch with for decades. My feeling was less about a shared connection to a small island in the Irish Sea than about Killip’s empathy for others.
During one of our conversations, he told me that the thing that made him most proud was seeing his photographs in his subjects’ homes, up on their walls or in their family albums. He once asked Gregory Halpern, one of his former students at Harvard who became a friend and is now an associate at Magnum, if he ever visited the people he’d photographed without his camera. “My notion of a great photographer at that point was something akin to an explorer, whose success was measured by how well they extracted images,” Halpern continues. “Chris, of course, had a very different idea of how to measure a photographer’s success, and spent a lot of his time talking about things that were bigger than photography. He spent a lifetime photographing in places where he had built relationships, where there was trust and respect.”3
All images © Jesus Pastor Photography Trust/Magnum Photos except where otherwise stated I interviewed Chris Killip a few times and, despite his reputation as one of the most influential photographers of his generation, I always felt he was someone I could easily relate to. I thought this might be because he, like my mother, was born on the Isle of Man in the mid-1940s. But very many people became close to him over the years, from his colleagues in the early days of Side Gallery in Newcastle, near to where he made so much of his most iconic work in the North East of England in the 1970s and 80s, to his photography students at Harvard University in the US, where he taught for more than 25 years up until his retirement in 2017 Most striking of all are his long relationships with the people he photographed, some of whom he stayed in touch with for decades. My feeling was less about a shared connection to a small island in the Irish Sea than about Killip’s empathy for others.
During one of our conversations, he told me that the thing that made him most proud was seeing his photographs in his subjects’ homes, up on their walls or in their family albums. He once asked Gregory Halpern, one of his former students at Harvard who became a friend and is now an associate at Magnum, if he ever visited the people he’d photographed without his camera. “My notion of a great photographer at that point was something akin to an explorer, whose success was measured by how well they extracted images,” Halpern continues. “Chris, of course, had a very different idea of how to measure a photographer’s success, and spent a lot of his time talking about things that were bigger than photography. He spent a lifetime photographing in places where he had built relationships, where there was trust and respect.”
All images © Jesus Pastor Photography Trust/Magnum Photos except where otherwise stated I interviewed Chris Killip a few times and, despite his reputation as one of the most influential photographers of his generation, I always felt he was someone I could easily relate to. I thought this might be because he, like my mother, was born on the Isle of Man in the mid-1940s. But very many people became close to him over the years, from his colleagues in the early days of Side Gallery in Newcastle, near to where he made so much of his most iconic work in the North East of England in the 1970s and 80s, to his photography students at Harvard University in the US, where he taught for more than 25 years up until his retirement in 2017 Most striking of all are his long relationships with the people he photographed, some of whom he stayed in touch with for decades. My feeling was less about a shared connection to a small island in the Irish Sea than about Killip’s empathy for others.
During one of our conversations, he told me that the thing that made him most proud was seeing his photographs in his subjects’ homes, up on their walls or in their family albums. He once asked Gregory Halpern, one of his former students at Harvard who became a friend and is now an associate at Magnum, if he ever visited the people he’d photographed without his camera. “My notion of a great photographer at that point was something akin to an explorer, whose success was measured by how well they extracted images,” Halpern continues. “Chris, of course, had a very different idea of how to measure a photographer’s success, and spent a lot of his time talking about things that were bigger than photography. He spent a lifetime photographing in places where he had built relationships, where there was trust and respect.”
All images © Jesus Pastor Photography num Photos except where otherwise stated I interviewed Chris Killip a few times and, despite his reputation as one of the most influential photographers of his generation, I always felt he was someone I could easily relate to. I thought this might be because he, like my mother, was born on the Isle of Man in the mid-1940s. But very many people became close to him over the years, from his colleagues in the early days of Side Gallery in Newcastle, near to where he made so much of his most iconic work in the North East of England in the 1970s and 80s, to his photography students at Harvard University in the US, where he taught for more than 25 years up until his retirement in 2017 Most striking of all are his long relationships with the people he photographed, some of whom he stayed in touch with for decades. My feeling was less about a shared connection to a small island in the Irish Sea than about Killip’s empathy for others.
During one of our conversations, he told me that the thing that made him most proud was seeing his photographs in his subjects’ homes, up on their walls or in their family albums. He once asked Gregory Halpern, one of his former students at Harvard who became a friend and is now an associate at Magnum, if he ever visited the people he’d photographed without his camera. “My notion of a great photographer at that point was something akin to an explorer, whose success was measured by how well they extracted images,” Halpern continues. “Chris, of course, had a very different idea of how to measure a photographer’s success, and spent a lot of his time talking about things that were bigger than photography. He spent a lifetime photographing in places where he had built relationships, where there was trust and respect.”
All images © Jesus Pastor Photography rust/Magnum Photos except where otherwise stated I interviewed Chris Killip a few times and, despite his reputation as one of the most influential photographers of his generation, I always felt he was someone I could easily relate to. I thought this might be because he, like my mother, was born on the Isle of Man in the mid-1940s. But very many people became close to him over the years, from his colleagues in the early days of Side Gallery in Newcastle, near to where he made so much of his most iconic work in the North East of England in the 1970s and 80s, to his photography students at Harvard University in the US, where he taught for more than 25 years up until his retirement in 2017 Most striking of all are his long relationships with the people he photographed, some of whom he stayed in touch with for decades. My feeling was less about a shared connection to a small island in the Irish Sea than about Killip’s empathy for others.
During one of our conversations, he told me that the thing that made him most proud was seeing his photographs in his subjects’ homes, up on their walls or in their family albums. He once asked Gregory Halpern, one of his former students at Harvard who became a friend and is now an associate at Magnum, if he ever visited the people he’d photographed without his camera. “My notion of a great photographer at that point was something akin to an explorer, whose success was measured by how well they extracted images,” Halpern continues. “Chris, of course, had a very different idea of how to measure a photographer’s success, and spent a lot of his time talking about things that were bigger than photography. He spent a lifetime photographing in places where he had built relationships, where there was trust and respect.”
All images © Jesus Pastor Photography Trust/Magnum Photos except where otherwise stated I interviewed Chris Killip a few times and, despite his reputation as one of the most influential photographers of his generation, I always felt he was someone I could easily relate to. I thought this might be because he, like my mother, was born on the Isle of Man in the mid-1940s. But very many people became close to him over the years, from his colleagues in the early days of Side Gallery in Newcastle, near to where he made so much of his most iconic work in the North East of England in the 1970s and 80s, to his photography students at Harvard University in the US, where he taught for more than 25 years up until his retirement in 2017 Most striking of all are his long relationships with the people he photographed, some of whom he stayed in touch with for decades. My feeling was less about a shared connection to a small island in the Irish Sea than about Killip’s empathy for others.
During one of our conversations, he told me that the thing that made him most proud was seeing his photographs in his subjects’ homes, up on their walls or in their family albums. He once asked Gregory Halpern, one of his former students at Harvard who became a friend and is now an associate at Magnum, if he ever visited the people he’d photographed without his camera. “My notion of a great photographer at that point was something akin to an explorer, whose success was measured by how well they extracted images,” Halpern continues. “Chris, of course, had a very different idea of how to measure a photographer’s success, and spent a lot of his time talking about things that were bigger than photography. He spent a lifetime photographing in places where he had built relationships, where there was trust and respect.”
All images © Jesus Pastor Photography Trust/Magnum Photos except where otherwise stated I interviewed Chris Killip a few times and, despite his reputation as one of the most influential photographers of his generation, I always felt he was someone I could easily relate to. I thought this might be because he, like my mother, was born on the Isle of Man in the mid-1940s. But very many people became close to him over the years, from his colleagues in the early days of Side Gallery in Newcastle, near to where he made so much of his most iconic work in the North East of England in the 1970s and 80s, to his photography students at Harvard University in the US, where he taught for more than 25 years up until his retirement in 2017 Most striking of all are his long relationships with the people he photographed, some of whom he stayed in touch with for decades. My feeling was less about a shared connection to a small island in the Irish Sea than about Killip’s empathy for others.
During one of our conversations, he told me that the thing that made him most proud was seeing his photographs in his subjects’ homes, up on their walls or in their family albums. He once asked Gregory Halpern, one of his former students at Harvard who became a friend and is now an associate at Magnum, if he ever visited the people he’d photographed without his camera. “My notion of a great photographer at that point was something akin to an explorer, whose success was measured by how well they extracted images,” Halpern continues. “Chris, of course, had a very different idea of how to measure a photographer’s success, and spent a lot of his time talking about things that were bigger than photography. He spent a lifetime photographing in places where he had built relationships, where there was trust and respect.”
All images © Jesus Pastor Photography Trust/Magnum Photos except where otherwise stated I interviewed Chris Killip a few times and, despite his reputation as one of the most influential photographers of his generation, I always felt he was someone I could easily relate to. I thought this might be because he, like my mother, was born on the Isle of Man in the mid-1940s. But very many people became close to him over the years, from his colleagues in the early days of Side Gallery in Newcastle, near to where he made so much of his most iconic work in the North East of England in the 1970s and 80s, to his photography students at Harvard University in the US, where he taught for more than 25 years up until his retirement in 2017 Most striking of all are his long relationships with the people he photographed, some of whom he stayed in touch with for decades. My feeling was less about a shared connection to a small island in the Irish Sea than about Killip’s empathy for others.
During one of our conversations, he told me that the thing that made him most proud was seeing his photographs in his subjects’ homes, up on their walls or in their family albums. He once asked Gregory Halpern, one of his former students at Harvard who became a friend and is now an associate at Magnum, if he ever visited the people he’d photographed without his camera. “My notion of a great photographer at that point was something akin to an explorer, whose success was measured by how well they extracted images,” Halpern continues. “Chris, of course, had a very different idea of how to measure a photographer’s success, and spent a lot of his time talking about things that were bigger than photography. He spent a lifetime photographing in places where he had built relationships, where there was trust and respect.”
All images © Jesus Pastor Photography Trust/Magnum Photos except where otherwise stated I interviewed Chris Killip a few times and, despite his reputation as one of the most influential photographers of his generation, I always felt he was someone I could easily relate to. I thought this might be because he, like my mother, was born on the Isle of Man in the mid-1940s. But very many people became close to him over the years, from his colleagues in the early days of Side Gallery in Newcastle, near to where he made so much of his most iconic work in the North East of England in the 1970s and 80s, to his photography students at Harvard University in the US, where he taught for more than 25 years up until his retirement in 2017 Most striking of all are his long relationships with the people he photographed, some of whom he stayed in touch with for decades. My feeling was less about a shared connection to a small island in the Irish Sea than about Killip’s empathy for others.
During one of our conversations, he told me that the thing that made him most proud was seeing his photographs in his subjects’ homes, up on their walls or in their family albums. He once asked Gregory Halpern, one of his former students at Harvard who became a friend and is now an associate at Magnum, if he ever visited the people he’d photographed without his camera. “My notion of a great photographer at that point was something akin to an explorer, whose success was measured by how well they extracted images,” Halpern continues. “Chris, of course, had a very different idea of how to measure a photographer’s success, and spent a lot of his time talking about things that were bigger than photography. He spent a lifetime photographing in places where he had built relationships, where there was trust and respect.”