Who We Are
Photographs by Martin Jenkinson
For more than four decades, Sheffield-based photojournalist Martin Jenkinson chronicled the drama and detail of the lives of everyday people.
During the 1980s, he became well known for his memorable images of British protests which were widely published in the pages of national newspapers and Trade Union journals. These powerful front-page images were attention grabbing, but his wider work is also worthy of examination, too. Each of his images is a candid insight into the communities that all of us are part of, as well as the experiences that we share.
This first major retrospective of Jenkinson’s work is a natural fit for Weston Park Museum, with many of the local subjects depicted in the imagery. Often humorous, the insightful photographs of Sheffield are on display alongside some of his most famous protest shots, as well as images from his travel photography archive and more.
Born in London, Jenkinson himself started photography after his own redundancy from a Sheffield steel works in 1979, and found himself in the perfect place to document a changing city that had once been so reliant on an industry in steep decline.
Most of the photographs are in black & white, and are accompanied by a variety of related paraphernalia including press badges, notebooks, contact sheets and so on. There’s even a full-scale mock-up of his photo studio.
Photographs from the 1980s’ miners strike will likely resonate not just with those involved in the protests, but with anybody with memories of the era. Jenkinson died in 2012, but his work continues to resonate with people far and wide. The images in this exhibition were selected in partnership with his daughter, Justine, who now manages his sizeable photographic archive.
A strong sense of social justice, fairness and equality is a common theme throughout Jenkinson’s work, and feels ever-more poignant at a time when the current political climate has once again divided the nation.