Smith’s Dock, North Shields

In 2003, Peter Fryer wrote, ‘I was living next to Smith’s Dock at the time I took these photographs. There wasn’t a lot of work coming into the yard and there was a planned closure of parts of the docks – the three eastern dry docks… It wasn’t a large or long term piece of work. It was seen as archival work, documenting something that was important to record; something that was under threat. The work consisted mainly of portraits of the workers still employed in the various ‘shops’ and general shots of the docks themselves.

All images © Peter Fryer