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| A sharp eye in the north east of England | A sharp eye in the north east of England |
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| Look through a photo gallery of Mark Pinder's work here | Look through a photo gallery of Mark Pinder's work here |
| The photojournalist Mark Pinder has been based in the North East and contributing work to most national papers – including this one – and many international ones like Der Spiegel, for the last 25 years. To celebrate his silver jubilee, the Queen's Hall Arts Centre in Hexham has mounted an exhibition showing a selection of his works from the last quarter of a century. Born in Barrow, Mark Pinder studied documentary photography on Magnum photographer David Hurn's renowned course at Newport in south Wales. Although most of his work is in the north of England, he also makes forays to Georgia and eastern Europe. The earliest picture in the festschrift, dating from 1986, when Pinder was only 20, shows an unemployed man with a pickaxe, scavenging for scrap metal on industrial wasteland at Stockton. A couple of years later sees a figure collecting waste coal on the beach at Easington Colliery – the setting of the final scenes of Get Carter – as well as a portrait of the massive colliery itself, a year or two before it closed down after nearly 100 years of production. Theer's also a June 1993 shot of miners leaving the last shift at Vane Tempest Colliery, where over 1800 people were once employed. Other sad landmarks in the decline of the region's heavy industriy include a shot of the massive cranes that dominated the skyline at Swan Hunter's in Wallsend being towed off to the new home at a shipyard in India. But it's far from all post-industrial doom and gloom. There's a picture of a steel fabrication worker inside the Angel of the North when it was under construction at Hartlepool in 1997. There are few formal portraits in this exhibition, but one that is included is of the Booker Prize-winning novelist Pat Barker in her Durham home. And there's also a lyrical series of shots taken at the Appleby Horse Fair this time last year. Other leisure activities shown include party-goers at Balambra's in Newcastle's Bigg Market, and a rather more sedate tea dance in Leeds Town Hall. Another apparently post-industrial shot shows rusting Soviet-era submarines at Blyth in Northumberland waiting to be broken up for scrap in 1990. In fact, parts of the submarine were used by artist Stefan Gec to create Trace Elements, a series of bells that hung from Newcastle's High Level Bridge and later remelted and turned into Bouy, an officially recognised marine buoy that was used as a navigational aid in several locations in the Irish Sea, the North Sea and elsewhere – "spears into pruning hooks". And of course Mark has had to do his fair share of politicians – they're all here: Kinnock and Hattersley at the Sheffield rally in 1992 that was credited with handing five more years in Downing Street to John Major; Margaret Thatcher at a 1989 Tory party conference in Scotland looking scarily like a vampire who's just enjoyed a nice pint of blood, and Tony Blair at the election count in 2005, po-faced and trying to pretend he's not standing next to Pensioners' Party candidate Cherri Gilham wearing a floppy "BLIAR" hat. A rare overseas picture included in this exhibition sees a Stalin-lookalike in Gori, the dictator's birthplace in Georgia. Although mainly in black & white, Mark does use colour on occasion - in particular here for his series on the Appleby Horse Fair, and also in a delightful one of a protestor wearing a colander at a protest at the Menwith Hill listening base. | The photojournalist Mark Pinder has been based in the North East and contributing work to most national papers – including this one – and many international ones like Der Spiegel, for the last 25 years. To celebrate his silver jubilee, the Queen's Hall Arts Centre in Hexham has mounted an exhibition showing a selection of his works from the last quarter of a century. Born in Barrow, Mark Pinder studied documentary photography on Magnum photographer David Hurn's renowned course at Newport in south Wales. Although most of his work is in the north of England, he also makes forays to Georgia and eastern Europe. The earliest picture in the festschrift, dating from 1986, when Pinder was only 20, shows an unemployed man with a pickaxe, scavenging for scrap metal on industrial wasteland at Stockton. A couple of years later sees a figure collecting waste coal on the beach at Easington Colliery – the setting of the final scenes of Get Carter – as well as a portrait of the massive colliery itself, a year or two before it closed down after nearly 100 years of production. Theer's also a June 1993 shot of miners leaving the last shift at Vane Tempest Colliery, where over 1800 people were once employed. Other sad landmarks in the decline of the region's heavy industriy include a shot of the massive cranes that dominated the skyline at Swan Hunter's in Wallsend being towed off to the new home at a shipyard in India. But it's far from all post-industrial doom and gloom. There's a picture of a steel fabrication worker inside the Angel of the North when it was under construction at Hartlepool in 1997. There are few formal portraits in this exhibition, but one that is included is of the Booker Prize-winning novelist Pat Barker in her Durham home. And there's also a lyrical series of shots taken at the Appleby Horse Fair this time last year. Other leisure activities shown include party-goers at Balambra's in Newcastle's Bigg Market, and a rather more sedate tea dance in Leeds Town Hall. Another apparently post-industrial shot shows rusting Soviet-era submarines at Blyth in Northumberland waiting to be broken up for scrap in 1990. In fact, parts of the submarine were used by artist Stefan Gec to create Trace Elements, a series of bells that hung from Newcastle's High Level Bridge and later remelted and turned into Bouy, an officially recognised marine buoy that was used as a navigational aid in several locations in the Irish Sea, the North Sea and elsewhere – "spears into pruning hooks". And of course Mark has had to do his fair share of politicians – they're all here: Kinnock and Hattersley at the Sheffield rally in 1992 that was credited with handing five more years in Downing Street to John Major; Margaret Thatcher at a 1989 Tory party conference in Scotland looking scarily like a vampire who's just enjoyed a nice pint of blood, and Tony Blair at the election count in 2005, po-faced and trying to pretend he's not standing next to Pensioners' Party candidate Cherri Gilham wearing a floppy "BLIAR" hat. A rare overseas picture included in this exhibition sees a Stalin-lookalike in Gori, the dictator's birthplace in Georgia. Although mainly in black & white, Mark does use colour on occasion - in particular here for his series on the Appleby Horse Fair, and also in a delightful one of a protestor wearing a colander at a protest at the Menwith Hill listening base. |
Mark's work show a sharp eye, a dry sense of humour and, what all good photo-journalists need, the ability to be in the right (or wrong) place at the right time. Mark Pinder's retrospective can be seen at the Queen's Hall Arts centre, Hexham, Northumberland, until Saturday June 23rd, admission free. | Mark's work show a sharp eye, a dry sense of humour and, what all good photo-journalists need, the ability to be in the right (or wrong) place at the right time. Mark Pinder's retrospective can be seen at the Queen's Hall Arts centre, Hexham, Northumberland, until Saturday June 23rd, admission free. |
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