(Picture: Tish Murtha, © Ella Murtha)

Photographer Tish Murtha first starting taking pictures as a defence against creepy guys.

Growing up in the west end of Newcastle, she’d often get pestered by ‘middle class kerb crawlers’, calling to young women to ask them for sex.

Tish’s solution? Whipping out her camera.

Just the threat of taking a picture (even if there wasn’t actually any film in the camera) was enough to send men speeding off into the distance.


That’s how it started. But once Tish fell in love with photography, her camera became more than just a defence against men.

(Picture: Tish Murtha, © Ella Murtha)

(Picture: Tish Murtha, © Ella Murtha)

Aged 20, Tish left Newcastle upon Tyne to study at the School of Documentary Photography at the University of Wales. There, she developed a sense of obligation to document the people and problems of her home back in the North East, as a way to highlight and resolve all the hardships she faced growing up.



And so she pursued documentary photography, studying and improving her skills before heading back to Newcastle in 1978.

For the next few years, Tish created the Youth Unemployment in the West End of Newcastle photo series.

(Picture: Tish Murtha, © Ella Murtha)

(Picture: Tish Murtha, © Ella Murtha)

As the name probably gives away, this project captured the experience of being young, on benefits, and losing hope in the future.

Her goal was not only to show others what it was like to grow up in the area, but to help those going through what she had.

She captured photos of her friends, her family, and the local community struggling under Thatcher – spending days unpaid and unfulfilled.

The resulting photos were so powerful that they sparked a debate in parliament, with a message from Tish being read aloud in the House of Commons in the 1981.

(Picture: Tish Murtha, © Ella Murtha)

‘Young people, already experiencing the problems of adolescence, are left to cope alone with a situation that their educational training has not prepared them for,’ Tish wrote in the essay that accompanied her work, ‘forcing them into a state of premature redundancy the minute they pass through the school gates for the last time.

‘What is becoming clear to the generation now approaching maturity is that our society has no solutions for their problems, can give no direction to their lives.

(Picture: Tish Murtha, © Ella Murtha)

(Picture: Tish Murtha, © Ella Murtha)

(Picture: Tish Murtha, © Ella Murtha)

‘Unemployment and all its associated deprivations are not only getting worse, but new technologies threaten to make the situation permanent.

‘Behind empty pathetic talk of increased leisure opportunities and freedom from repetitive labour, stands the spectre of enforced idleness, wasted resources and the squandering of a whole generation of human potential.

‘This is vandalism on a grand scale.

(Picture: Tish Murtha, © Ella Murtha)

‘Hidden in a smokescreen of cynical double-talk and pious moralising, the shape of the future is nevertheless clearly discernable.

‘Cuts in social spending, including unemployment benefits, mean that the conditions under which they must endure their enforced idleness will rapidly deteriorate to become an intolerable burden, the consequences of which will be enormous.

‘Society has withdrawn its contract from these young people, can they now be expected to live by its rules?

(Picture: Tish Murtha, © Ella Murtha)

‘They see no real future for themselves, even the ‘right’ to earn a living is being replaced by a compulsory dependency on sub-human terms.



‘The sense of aimlessness and pent up frustrations are reaching critical levels where they will be transformed into an explosive anger, directed against the establishment that has been so careless of their hopes and needs.’

(Picture: Tish Murtha, © Ella Murtha)

(Picture: Tish Murtha, © Ella Murtha)

The exhibition of Tish’s work was a passionate response to the failure of the govervment’s Youth Opportunities Programme, and a glorious protest against the Thatcher government’s Free Market philosophy.

It drew light to the reality of the lives of young people in a deprived area, forced into unemployment and denied help or direction.

The series was an incredibly important piece of work at the time.

(Picture: Tish Murtha, © Ella Murtha)

(Picture: Tish Murtha, © Ella Murtha)

But now, four years after Tish Murtha passed away, her daughter, Ella Murtha, wants to make sure that the photos and their message are not forgotten.

Ella plans to create a Kickstarter to fund the production of Youth Unemployment, a book of Tish’s photo series alongside her essay.

(Picture: Tish Murtha, © Ella Murtha)

‘Initially the project started to help me with my grief,’ Ella told metro.co.uk.

‘Looking through the images and negatives gave me something to focus on rather than the gaping hole left by the loss of my mam.

‘Her work was so important to her and unfortunately due to circumstances and being intensely private and quite defensive and protective the work had almost been forgotten about.

(Picture: Tish Murtha, © Ella Murtha)

‘The response I have received from people has been overwhelming. People absolutely love her work and they want a book!

‘She was a genius with a camera and the book will be a critical addition to the history of UK documentary photography.


‘That is my gift to my mam: to secure her place in photographic history.’

(Picture: Tish Murtha, © Ella Murtha)

‘Since her death I have made it my mission to get her work the recognition it deserves.’

Ella told us that she hopes each photo will stay with people after they look at them, and serve as a reminder of the reality of poverty and unemployment.

‘My mam was extremely sensitive to people and their emotions and really really cared.

‘That is what I see when I look at her work and that is what I hope people see and feel when they look at them.

‘They are incredibly powerful and evocative. Even the least empathic person must be able to see the truth in them.’

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