Photography
Side Photographic Collection
Through its own production, support, purchase and retrieval, Amber has built up a significant photographic collection. Where possible, we're putting this work online.
The photographic engagement with the North of England has produced a remarkable enough body of work, but since Side Gallery opened in 1977, this has been extended through exhibition purchases and donations to include a wide-ranging representation of the international classic and contemporary documentary that continues to inspire us. Where we hold the rights and/or where the photographer gives permission, we're committed to putting as much of this work online as possible. As funding allows, new exhibitions will appear and some exhibitions will be developed further.
Bitter Harvest
David Lurie (Photographer)
The working conditions on the fruit farms of South Africa’s Western Cape, documented in 1989.
Building the Tyne Bridge
Unknown (Photographer)
Photographs from the collection of Dorman Long, the builders, of the construction of Newcastle upon Tyne’s George V or Tyne Bridge in the 1920s. They used their existing design for the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but the Tyne Bridge was completed first.
Burma, Exiles from the Golden Land
Dean Chapman (Photographer)
Successive Burmese military dictatorships have made the once prosperous southeast Asian nation one of the world's most impoverished failed states. Opposition forces are not tolerated. Pro-democracy uprisings have been answered with bloody and brutal clampdowns in which unknown numbers have been imprisoned, tortured, disappeared or murdered. For those who chose to flee, refuge in a developed nation, such as the UK, can provide a new beginnings and unparalleled opportunities, but the instinct to campaign and work for regime change and democracy in Burma remains undimmed.
Burma: Darkness in the Golden Land
Dean Chapman (Photographer)
Documentation of life in Burma under the junta that seized power in 1988. The photographs were taken between 1990 and 2001, part of the same engagement that led to Dean Chapman's book and exhibition, Karenni.
Byker
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen (Photographer)
The seminal documentation of a threatened and eventually demolished working class, terraced house community in Newcastle upon Tyne’s East End by a founder member of Amber, who lived there when the collective first moved to the North East of England in 1969. Book available. See also Amber's film, Byker.