Photography of people: How Tish Murtha documented life in marginalised communities from the...

People are always at the centre of Tish Murtha’s photographs. Through her eyes her hometown of Elswick, a working-class neighbourhood in Newcastle, looks like a film set of some war-torn city. But she began shooting in the late 1970s, far from wartime – the flat vistas of burned cars and destroyed houses are the result of neglect, deindustrialisation, and poverty. It’s the contrast between the bleak landscape and the intense vitality of the people amongst the rubble that makes her work extraordinary.

One of ten children brought up in a local council house, and enrolled on a youth unemployment scheme herself, Murtha was one of the rare photographers to document life in marginalised communities from the inside. Her first two exhibitions focused on the lives of young people in the area, often friends and family. The pictures capture her subject’s defiance, warmth and a sense of community at odds with the dire circumstances they were born into. She was especially adept at spotting moments of tenderness and quietness amid the chaos of the housing estates; her work is infused with a humanity that makes it timeless.