A thoughtful and evocative tribute to the life – and talent – of British photographer Tish Murtha, Sheffield DocFest’s opening night film Tish, directed by Paul Sng, traces the life of this innately skilful and driven artist, and details her commitment to fighting for the communities such as the one she grew up in.
Born in South Shields in 1956, the third of 10 children, she was very much the product of a tough upbringing and an often tough father, but once she discovered photography she took a no-holds-barred approach to recording life in the streets where she was brought up. Her access to these often bleak city streets was guaranteed, given she was very much part of that community.
As once interviewee says: “If you want to photograph the tribe, you’ve got to be part of the tribe…you’ve got to dance the same dance.”
Her life story is told by those who knew and respected her, and core to the film is the role of her daughter Ella as interviewer, a woman who has been instrumental in making sure her mother’s work is not forgotten. The voice of Murtha is played by acclaimed British actor Maxine Peake.
Tish died on March 13, 2013, the day before her 57th birthday, after suffering a brain aneurysm.
“When I think of me mam, it’s always people,” she says. “She just took pictures of what was in front of her. The people in front of her needed to be seen and she knew that with this camera she could capture it and give people a value. Me mam was going to make sure they were seen.”
Tish left school at 16 with seemingly little by way of direction. Her sister Eileen Murtha-Brown recalls however that she was determined from a young age, joining her siblings in scavenging within abandoned houses (“we were proper skip-rats” she says). When Tish came across a camera in one house she started carrying it around despite it not having any film. Some friends showed her how to use the camera and develop film, and later encouraged her to seek formal further education.
She took a photography course at Bath Lane, Newcastle, where her lecturer convinced her to apply to the Documentary Photography course in Newport, newly set up by Magnum member David Hurn and the only one of its kind at the time. She embraced the documentary nature of the course, famously taking gritty and immersive pictures of working class street parties as part of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977.
Returning to Newcastle she knew she wanted to record the lives of the young and disenfranchised and was committed to the working class struggle. She built trust in the communities she photographed, adopting an informal and inclusive approach, often giving photographs to the people she . She recorded images of youth unemployment and staged an exhibition on the local Juvenile Jazz Bands, which she disapproved of claiming they were run by failed sergeant-majors who sometimes bullied the children. (She was dubbed the “demon snapper” by some.)
As one fellow photographer points out, she was uncompromising and never really fitted into the photographic art world. Nor did she received financial support. She moved to London in 1982 where – against the odds – she received a commission from The Photographer’s Gallery to photograph Soho and sex workers, titled ‘London at Night’. Her last major venture was the documentation of central Middlesbrough before it disappeared as part of the Middlehaven regeneration project.
Director Paul Sng astutely allows Ella to tell her mother’s story through warm-hearted access to some of Tish’s siblings and old friends, which affords the film generous and insightful anecdotes and extensive use of Tish’s library of images. The fact that Tish seems to have kept every note, school report and print makes the story all the more immersive. And despite the film being seen very much through the eyes of Tish’s family and friends it does succeed in rightly celebrating an overlooked photographic talent who deserves to stand alongside considerably more acclaimed practitioners of the craft. As Sng’s film underlines, hers is a legacy worth celebrating.
UK, 2023, 90mins
Dir: Paul Sng
Production: Freya Films, Velvet Joy Productions, Hopscotch Films
Producer: Jennifer Corcoran
Cinematography: Hollie Galloway
Editors: Lindsay Watson, Angela Slaven
Music: Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres
With: Maxine Peake, Shin-Fei Chen
