From the end of November to April 2019, Weston Park Museum is hosting retrospective exhibition Who We Are, based on the work of Sheffield photographer Martin Jenkinson.
Martin moved to Sheffield from London in 1976 to work in the steel industry before being laid off in 1979. Shortly after, he joined a local newspaper and began a career as a photojournalist which spanned four decades.
During the 1980s, Martin became widely known for covering protests during the British industrial struggle, perhaps most famously at the miner’s protests at Orgreave in 1984 where he snapped a pit worker wearing a fake police hat, seemingly grilling police officers. A week before, he photographed the arrest of the president of the National Union of Mineworkers Arthur Scargill.
NUM president Arthur Scargill, arrested at Orgreave miners’ strike. 30 May 1984.
Martin died of cancer in 2012, after which his daughter, Justine Jenkinson, began to now manage his extensive archives. Of the exhibition, Justine said: “We are really grateful for this opportunity for Martin’s work to be recognised. While including some of his best known and most acclaimed photographs from his industrial and political archive, the exhibition also demonstrates other important aspects of his work.
“These images show the breadth of Martin’s interest in people and depict their everyday lives in photographs that are moving, imaginative and artistic.”
People queuing to apply for jobs at Woodstock Diner in Sheffield, 1983. 50 jobs were available, 1,500 applied.
Curator at Weston Park Museum Louisa Briggs said: “Martin had an extraordinary ability to convey the inherent humanity in the subjects he covered. His images are both a powerful document of the events that have shaped us and a moving reminder of the experiences that we each have in common.
“We’re hugely grateful to Martin’s family for allowing us the opportunity to create this exhibition, the first major retrospective of his work.”
Who We Are: Photographs by Martin Jenkinson opens on 24 November at Weston Park Museum. Entry is free. Head here for more information.
