02/10/2026
I was in Byker this week for the opening of the Archive, and visited Tish Murtha’s Close to Home exhibition, whose work I’ve admired for a long time.
Both made me think about something often disregarded in creative projects about people & place: integrity, ethics and dignity in how stories are represented.
It’s powerful seeing a place told through people who know it, through photographs, memories & stories. Places are more than buildings and streets; they’re shaped by the people who live there, the relationships formed and stories carried across generations.
The Byker Archive speaks to the importance of communities having ownership of their own histories, keeping archives connected to the places they come from, rather than held elsewhere. Creating space & tools for people to tell their own stories, in their own way & their own place.
Tish’s work feels deeply connected to that. Rooted in the North East, she documented working-class life with an intimacy that came from being part of the community she photographed. Her work didn’t just document inequality; it acted as evidence & challenged the system, making visible the effects of unemployment, poverty & industrial decline.
There’s an injustice and irony in Tish’s story I find hard to grasp though. 💔 Despite early recognition, she was never able to make a living from photography. She experienced the same poverty & inequality she documented, & died in 2013 with much of her work still undervalued by the photography world. Failed by the system & the sector.
It’s deeply unjust for an artist making such uncompromising, socially engaged work only for it to receive wider recognition after they’re no longer here to experience it. It’s a tension I recognise personally, & through many creative friends: how do you make work with integrity while surviving within systems that decide what (and who) gets valued?
Tish’s daughter Ella has done amazing work protecting her mum’s archive / legacy, with the work now receiving significant recognition.
A reminder that the stories we tell & how we tell them matters, but so does who gets to tell them, who gets valued for telling them, who they belong to & where they are held.
