There’s an impetuous, unpredictable energy to the pictures captured by the late Tish Murtha, the Tyneside documentary photographer who turned her lens on to marginalised communities in the north-east of England. There’s also humour in the shots, and no small degree of anger. And as this engrossing, affectionate film by Paul Sng reveals, there is a great deal of Murtha’s prickly, uncompromising personality reflected in the photographs she took.
A clear kinship is evident between this documentary and Sng’s previous film, Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché, about the X-Ray Spex frontwoman. Both are portraits of trailblazing female artists who struggled to find acceptance; both films also provide a window into wider societal issues. Poly Styrene dealt with racism and sexism in the music industry; Tish confronts class prejudices and unemployment. And both films were made in collaboration with the daughters of their subjects. Tish Murtha’s only child, Ella Murtha, is an engaging guide to her mother’s life and legacy; her openness and candour imbue the film with its considerable emotional impact.
