I saw these women leaving Marr’s fish-processing factory in Hull one Friday lunchtime in December 1977, wearing headscarves and carrying shopping bags, their white overalls underneath their coats, after a morning of filleting and packing fish. I expect many of them were thinking about their Christmas shopping, but who knows? I liked the reflection in the puddles, the row of chimney stacks behind, even though I had to stand in the mud to get the shot. Looking back, I can see how it relates to the whole history of Hessle Road, which was the beating heart of Hull’s fishing industry.
Deep-sea trawling, which is the basis of the city’s fishing fortunes, was the most dangerous industry in the world: they used to say for every miner killed, four fishermen died at sea. Less than a decade before this photo was taken, after three trawlers sank, killing 58 men, Lillian Bilocca from Hessle Road led a women’s movement that became known as the “headscarf revolutionaries” to improve safety at sea.
Their campaign was successful, but by the time I started photographing Hessle Road, it was under attack: the cod wars with Iceland were destroying the deep-sea fleet, while the council was demolishing all the old houses, because it didn’t want the city to be regarded as a little fishing backwater. So, sadly, when you look at this picture today, you know the people were all going to be moved out.
I don’t come from a fishing family – my dad was on the cargo ships. He went to work in America and came back with a typewriter and a camera, which were out of the ordinary in a working-class family at that time. I left school without any qualifications, only later going to university to study psychology. But in 1970, I bought a second-hand German Rolleicord TLR camera for £12, and took it travelling.
In terms of photography, the turning point for me came in September 1971, when I went over to Northern Ireland to see for myself what was going on, because there was increasing bloodshed and I didn’t trust the BBC. I was warned not to photograph British troops or even adults, but I found the youngsters were more than happy to be photographed in the streets of Londonderry and Belfast. That inadvertently sowed the seeds of my photo-documentary study of Hull’s fishing community and trawling industry. My very first solo exhibition, in 1979, was called The Kids of Hessle Road.
I consider myself more as a psychologist with a camera than a photographer. At first, I was keen on sunrises and sunsets, then moved on to silhouettes of trees, before settling on people as my subject. My mum was a bit snobbish about Hessle Road, but I started to cycle down there and meander around, waiting for photo opportunities. I took more than 6,500 shots of the area between 1971 and 1986, but once the houses were demolished, the customers for the shops disappeared, too, and today there aren’t many people living there. I’ve given my archive to the Hull History Centre, part of the university, and have also just raised money through a Kickstarter campaign for a book.
Hull is divided by a river. You had the west side, the trawlers and the fishing, and the east side, which was the cargo docks. The east side was called the Christian side, which implied that the west was pagan. It’s common in all communities that live with extreme danger for there to be a lot of superstition. I was born within what were once the old town walls, so I was from neither east nor west. I was an outsider to the fishing community – and having gone to university as well, you know, that does detach you. But they trusted me.
Alec Gill CV
Born Hull, 1946.
Trained Self-taught.
Influences “My university supervisor advised all undergraduates to specialise – he meant in psychology, but I applied it to my photography.”
High point “An MBE for ‘services to Hull’s fishing community’.”
Low point “Being turned down by a variety of grant-(not)-giving bodies.”
Top tip “Take photographs out of love and not for the money you can get out of them.”
