Mik Critchlow
Coming from Ashington and a family with strong mining traditions, Mik Critchlow joined the Merchant Navy at the age of fifteen and spent several years away from the area. He returned to Ashington during 1977 and studied Art & Design at the Northumberland Technical College (a course which he had wished to take on leaving school, but was denied due to lack of money in his family).
On seeing an exhibition by the Ashington Group during 1977 - a group of Ashington men brought together under the auspices of the Workers’ Educational Association in 1934 - Mik realised the value of the painting as social document, the visual representation of everyday life by one’s own experiences and knowledge. Mik began an ongoing project to photograph the town and its people.
Through the late 1970s, the 80s and the early to mid 90s, Mik continued to work as a documentary photographer, projects including ‘Ashington’, ‘Seacoalers’, ‘Seafarers’, ‘Durham County Cricket Club’. His last major photography project involved documenting Ellington Pit in Northumberland, when closure was threatened in the mid 90s. Drawing on his parallel career as a guitarist, he currently producing bespoke bottlenecks to the trade.
Ashington
from: Photography
A documentation of the Northumberland mining town by a photographer from that community, developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Seafarers
from: Photography
The lives of merchant seamen and the seamen's dispute of 1988, an exhibition developed as part of Side Gallery's NOW series, which aimed to provide a rapid response to current events and issues.
Seacoalers
from: Photography
The community of seacoal gatherers at Lynemouth, Northumberland, documented in the early 1980s, by the Ashington photographer (cousin to one of the seacoalers), who brought them to Amber after the making of the film Seacoal.
Unclear Family: Crook Workshop, 1993
from: Photography
A group show presentation of the work coming out of the Crook International Photography Workshop in 1993, documenting the experience of family in and around the South West Durham town.