Tish Murtha was born in South Shields in 1956 and grew up in Elswick in Newcastle’s West End. She studied photography at Newcastle College before being encouraged to apply to the newly established documentary photography course at Newport College of Art, led by Magnum photographer David Hurn.
Asked at interview what she intended to photograph, Murtha replied, “I want to take pictures of policemen kicking children.” Hurn later described it as the shortest interview he ever conducted, recognising immediately her commitment to social documentary practice.
After graduating from Newport College of Art in 1978, Tish Murtha returned to Newcastle upon Tyne to photograph her own community in Elswick. Once sustained by Tyneside’s shipbuilding industry, the area was experiencing the effects of industrial decline. Murtha’s work from this period forms one of the most significant visual records of working-class life in late twentieth-century Britain, addressing social inequality through sustained engagement with place and people.
Murtha understood photography as a means of challenge and testimony. Her purpose was direct: to make visible the conditions of everyday life and to insist they be taken seriously.
Photo © Ella Murtha, all rights reserved.
Tish Murtha’s Youth Unemployment (1981) remains one of the most powerful social documentary series of its time — an unflinching portrait of young people growing up amid economic decline and political neglect. When the project was posthumously published by her daughter, Ella, in 2017, it quickly became a landmark photobook, and our choice for Photobook of the Year. So when news of the forthcoming Elswick Kids series emerged, we were eager to see more of this essential story brought to light.
Photo © Ella Murtha, all rights reserved.
Ella Murtha: “My mam believed that photography could change lives for the better. Sadly, she passed away in 2013 before her dream of publishing a book could come true. In 2017, I collaborated with Bluecoat Press, then independently run by Colin Wilkinson, and launched a Kickstarter campaign to publish her acclaimed series Youth Unemployment (1981). The response was incredible. The book sold out within three months, its limited hardback edition reaching audiences far beyond Newcastle and reigniting interest in her work.”
Following the success of the book, The Photographers’ Gallery presented a major retrospective of Tish Murtha’s work. The exhibition introduced her photography to a wider audience and consolidated her position within the history of British documentary practice. Her images continue to shape how class, community and resilience in late twentieth-century Britain are understood.
Photo © Ella Murtha, all rights reserved.
"The landscape may be rough, but the kids were making the most of what little they had. They have humour and resilience that shines through in every image."
- Ella Murtha.
Elswick Kids focuses on Murtha’s own community in Newcastle’s West End. After returning home from Newport in 1978, she began photographing the streets where she had grown up. Friends, neighbours and family members form the core of the work. The series documents childhood at a time when playing out in the street remained part of everyday life, even as unemployment across Tyneside reached critical levels.
The social conditions are evident, but the photographs are not defined by hardship. Murtha’s young subjects convey humour, energy and resilience. Together, the images operate both as a record of place and as a sustained study of community life.
Photo © Ella Murtha, all rights reserved.
Ella Murtha: “I’ve always loved this series, and the response from people has been incredible. Everyone seems to feel that these images are something special. Looking through the archives felt like travelling back in time. The kids are always outside, and you rarely see an adult or a car, unless it’s abandoned, burnt out and being used as a climbing frame. There are dogs everywhere too. It feels like another lifetime. I was born later than these kids, in 1984, but I remember going out after breakfast during the holidays and spending the whole day exploring. You only came home when you were hungry or it got dark.”
Photo © Ella Murtha, all rights reserved.
“My mam exhibited her Juvenile Jazz Bands (1979) and Youth Unemployment (1981) series. Around the same time, she documented the campaign to save Scotswood Works, and was commissioned by the Tyneside Housing Aid Centre, in partnership with Shelter, to photograph children living in poverty and the housing struggles faced by older generations. But these pictures of the Elswick Kids came first.
Although they were never exhibited and there is no accompanying text from Tish, they clearly meant a great deal to her. That alone makes them deeply important to me.
Photo © Ella Murtha, all rights reserved.
Photo © Ella Murtha, all rights reserved.
Photo © Ella Murtha, all rights reserved.
Photo © Ella Murtha, all rights reserved.
A selection of Tish Murtha’s photographs from Elswick Kids (1978) and Youth Unemployment (1981) was exhibited as part of the British Culture Archive’s debut exhibition at The Social in 2019. Her work has also featured in the touring exhibition A Woman’s Work, which foregrounds the contribution of women to Britain’s documentary photography.
Photo © Ella Murtha, all rights reserved.
A feature-length documentary, Tish, was released in 2023, marking a significant step in preserving the legacy of one of Britain’s most influential documentary photographers.
Tish Murtha’s images of life on the margins exposed the deep inequalities faced by working-class communities, while celebrating their humour, strength, and solidarity. The film offers an intimate portrait of her motivations and politics, exploring the challenges she faced as a young working-class woman from the North East and questioning how society values both its communities and the artists who represent them.
Vandalism on a Grand Scale is a major new hardback publication dedicated to the work of Tish Murtha, one of the most important British documentary photographers of the late twentieth century.
Published by British Culture Archive in collaboration with the Tish Murtha Archive, the book returns Murtha’s seminal Youth Unemployment body of work to print for a new generation. Long out of print and highly sought-after since its original publication in 2017, it now returns in a redesigned and resequenced form, with texts by Ella Murtha and Jen Corcoran, and design by Friederike Huber.
With a bold new title drawn from Murtha’s accompanying essay, the book brings one of the defining works of British documentary photography back into circulation with renewed clarity, urgency and force. Produced as a substantial case-bound hardback, it has been made as a lasting publication worthy of Murtha’s landmark body of work.
“Since the original book went out of print, I’ve been asked so many times if I’d ever make another. For a long time, I didn’t feel ready, but returning to the series now, with British Culture Archive, who believe so deeply in the work, has felt very special. I’m so proud of what we’ve created together for my mam.”
Ella Murtha
The book will be available to pre-order from 14 March 2026, with publication and fulfilment scheduled for 9 June 2026.
The first 1,000 copies of Vandalism on a Grand Scale will include an exclusive fine art card featuring the cover.
Pre-order link: https://britishculturearchive.co.uk/product/vandalism-on-a-grand-scale/
