“When the pressures of earning her living intensify, she swallows her prescribed tranquillisers and then slashes her arms with nails, razors or pen-knives,” photographer Tish Murtha wrote of a 20-year-old mother working as a prostitute in 1980s Newcastle.

Tish Murtha hoped she could somehow bring about a change by highlighting the impact of poverty on young people’s lives

The woman, who Murtha included in her essay “Youth Unemployment in the West End of Newcastle” nearly four decades ago, had been forced into sex work to support her young family when her temporary employment as a painter and decorator with a community project came to an end.

Stark and sombre this case may sound, but it was the reality facing much of north-east England’s youth in the Eighties, with opportunity scarce amid industrial decline and stagnation.ç

Fuente completa: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/photography/tish-murtha-youth-unemployment-photography-margaret-thatcher-england-a7984026.html#gallery