Henning Christoph

Henning Christoph

Life of the unemployed, the elderly and the children in the Bogside, the Catholic neighborhood in Derry, Northern Ireland, during the beginning of ‘The Troubles’, the violent conflict between unionists and loyalists over the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. Tensions between residents of the Bogside, allied under the Derry Citizens’ Defence Association, and the police (the Royal Ulster Constabulary), were building in Derry for over a year before a very large communal riot broke out in August 1969, which became known as the Battle of the Bogside. This riot is commonly seen as one of the first major confrontations in ‘The Troubles’.

Henning Christoph (Germany, b. 1944) emigrated to the United States with his family in 1950. In 1960, he sold his first news photograph, an image of a fight at a soccer game, to the Washington Daily News, where it was featured on the front page. He went on to study anthropology and journalism at the University of Maryland in Washington D.C., graduating in 1967. That same year, Christoph returned to Germany to study photography at the Folkwangschule in Essen, before starting his freelance career as a photographer. Since 1969, he has worked for international magazines such as Life, National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, Geo and Stern.