Un reportage sur les habitants de Byker Hill (Est de Newcastle) en 1970 avant que le lieu ne soit complètement détruit dans un projet de rénovation.
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen a documenté une communauté très unie à Newcastle dans une région qui a été sa maison pendant sept ans et qui était destinée au réaménagement en gros. L’œuvre a acquis une reconnaissance nationale en tant que témoignage photographique clé d’une riche culture ouvrière à la veille de sa destruction. Le livre a été choisi par The Observer comme l’un des dix meilleurs livres de l’année.
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen est une photographe et cinéaste d’origine finlandaise, membre fondatrice du Amber Film & Photography Collective et de la Side Photographic Gallery basée à Newcastle upon Tyne. Avec Byker, ses autres projets à long terme en photographie et en cinéma comprennent Writing in the Sand, Letters to Katja, The Coal Coast, Song For Billy, Step by Step, Keeping Time, Byker Revisited, Today I’m With You and Still Here.
En 2011, la photographie de Konttinen et les films d’Amber ont été inscrits au Registre britannique de la Mémoire du monde de l’UNESCO comme étant d’une valeur et d’une importance nationales exceptionnelles pour le Royaume-Uni ; photos en n.b.
“…masterpieces of representation – political as well as photographic.” -– Jules Lubbock, The New Statesman.
“An epoch of social history is caught in these pictures that reflect the consequences for a community as its whole reason for existence – the engineering works and shipyards – are slowly dismantled. It has nothing to do with nostalgia: the conditions of living were too harsh for that. But the attachment to places that have been the site of struggle and love and suffering is no love of brick and stone and poverty, but a measure of the intensity of what people felt for each other here….. Here is a sensibility, a wisdom of the eye and the heart that makes this collection unforgettable.” -Jeremy Seabrook, New Society.
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen documented a close-knit community in Newcastle in an area that was her home for seven years and which was destined for wholesale redevelopment. The work gained national recognition as a key photographic account of a rich working class culture on the eve of its destruction. The book was selected by The Observer as one of the top ten books of the year.
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen is a Finnish-born photographer and filmmaker and a founder member of the Amber Film & Photography Collective and the Side Photographic Gallery based in Newcastle upon Tyne. Along with Byker, her other long term projects in photography and film include Writing in the Sand, Letters to Katja, The Coal Coast, Song For Billy, Step by Step, Keeping Time, Byker Revisited, Today I’m With You and Still Here.
In 2011 Konttinen’s photography and Amber’s films were inscribed in the UNESCO UK Memory of the World Register as being of outstanding national value and importance to the United Kingdom.
