Richard Grassick
He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1953. Graduating in Social Sciences from York University in 1974, he moved to the North East of England, founding the North East Photographers' Co-operative in 1976 and co-founding the community newspaper Durham Street Press and the National Union of Public Employees regional magazine in 1977 and 1979. In 1977 and 1978, he worked as a documentary photographer at Beamish Museum, producing a series of exhibitions about factory work in the region. In 1979, he established the Darlington Media Group and Workshop and began to document Darlington and the Durham Dales. He joined Amber/Side in 1983, working initially on two video tapes exploring the situation in the coalfield News from Durham, and Where are We Going?
In 1986, along with other Amber members, he began a period of production in the fishing town of North Shields, including The Privatisation Tapes, Shields Stories, his photo essay Look Me in the Eye, and two major feature films, In Fading Light and Dream On. From 1990, he concentrated more substantially on West Durham, setting up a Durham-wide exhibition touring scheme and working both as a photographer and an organizer on a four year international documentary project, Unclear Family, that linked Crook in West Durham with communities in Northern France, Czechoslovakia and Germany. In 1991, in Ramar Goodbye, he documented the closure of a Crook clothing factory. In 1992, in A Little Piece of Land, he looked at smallholdings in the area and, from 1993 onwards, began to develop People of the Hills, a long term look at life in the Upper Durham Dales, including Stepping Up a young people's photography project about the move from primary to secondary school. The cultural geographer David Crouch has collaborated on People of the Hills.
Following an exhibition, in 1999, of some of the Dales work, he was asked to document post-industrial experience in Bremerhaven, Germany. At the same time, as part of the regeneration of Side Gallery's production work, he helped to develop the Coalfield Stories. As part of this, his own project, On the Surface, documents four ex-miners and their families and how they have reconstructed their lives in the post-industrial context.
Look Me In The Eye
from: Photography
Collaborative project with a paraplegic, campaigning to change attitudes to disability, North Shields,1988, developed as part of the work of Amber's Current Affairs Unit.
NUPE
from: Photography
Documentation of the working lives and campaigning of members of the National Union of Public Employees, 1978 to 1993, initiated by the photographer as part of union journal Northern News & Views.
Working the Landscape: Images of Frosterley
from: Photography
Exploration of the village of Frosterley in South West Durham by Darlington Media Group, 1980s.
Ramar Goodbye
from: Photography
Documentation of a South West Durham clothing factory taken in the weeks before closure, 1991, part of an engagement with Weardale industry that led to the photographer's People of the Hills.
Unclear Family: Solo Show
from: Photography
An exhibition of the photographer's work, exploring family experience, developed around the four International Photography Workshops in the early to mid 1990s - Cheb County in the Czech Republic, Crook in County Durham, UK, The Somme valley in France and the Ruhr valley in Germany.
People of the Hills
from: Photography
A long-term documentation of life in the upper Durham dales, which began to be fully developed in the early 1990s, linked to the photographer's co-ordination of the Crook International Photography Workshop in 1993. The work continues.
Stepping Up
from: Photography
The lives of eleven year olds in Weardale, County Durham, looking at the transition between primary and secondary school in a rural area, documented by member of the Amber collective, late 1990s.
Surviving on Darlington's Shop Floors
from: Photography
Manufacturing industry in the County Durham town, documented in 1980/81 and brought to the Side Photographic Collection when the photographer joined Amber shortly afterwards.
Post Industrial
from: Photography
The lives of four ex-miners and their families in East Durham, 1998 to 2004, compared with post-industrial experience in Bremerhaven in Germany, documented as part of Amber's Coalfield Stories programme of production and commissions.
Unclear Family: Crook Workshop, 1993
from: Photography
A group show presentation of the work coming out of the Crook International Photography Workshop in 1993, documenting the experience of family in and around the South West Durham town.