Chris Harrison was born and bought up in Jarrow, a tough industrial town in the south bank of the river Tyne. It's where he calls home,
"I have lived abroad for more years than I care to admit. My Mother and Father are getting old and moving out of Jarrow, cutting me adrift with now way back. Finally, I have been forced to think about who I am and where I belong.
I never wanted to leave Jarrow. I always imagined that one day I would make it my home. I realise now that I can never return. Somehow I traded knowledge of the outside world for some vital piece of me. With this realisation, I have returned home in order to try to establish how much of where I am from determines who I am, and to begin to understand why I can’t seem to let go.
Hopefully, by photographing the places I know intimately I can show something we all instinctively recognize; that, as L.P. Hartley said so eloquently “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."
Chris Harrison has been a photographer for over 20 years. He was born in Jarrow in 1967 and took an MA in photography at the Royal College of Art. His work has been shown in venues around the world including the Tate Britain and Les Rencontres d’Arles. He currently lives and works in Oslo.
Chris Harrison’s I Belong Jarrow. is published by Schilt Publishing and, distributed by Thames & Hudson. Chris Harrison’s photographs will be accompanied by an essay written by Val Williams.
www.chrisharrison.no
www.schltpublishing.com
