Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen’s Photography and Amber’s Films

Between 1969 and 2009, a period of immense social change in the North East of England, Konttinen and Amber Films created a series of works of remarkable quality and depth exploring a huge shift in popular culture. A heartland in the birth of the Industrial Revolution, the region has had to adjust rapidly to a post-industrial reality.

Konttinen and Amber’s work captures the experience from the epic locations of shipbuilding and coal to the forgotten drift mines and brickworks. Crucially the work captures it in the communities – from the terraced streets of Byker to the flawed and visionary Byker Wall Estate that replaced it; travelling communities, fishing communities, mining communities; the texture of people’s lives; particular experiences that speak to the wider world.

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