Side Gallery

We've got a bluesky account! Find us @sidegallery.bsky.social. Excited to connect with you all there! 📸 bsky.app/profile/sidega…

🏠 Today is International Day of Families, a UN day on the pressures shaping family life. Richard Grassick’s Unclear Family looks at those pressures directly, photographing family beyond the narrow political ideals of the 1990s. 🔗 See more: sidegallery.co.uk/collection/unc…

🌊 "The photo Play Boat symbolises the ever changing coastline of Britain... heavily used by the visitors and constantly bombarded by the weather..."  David Cross on "Play Boat, Westward Ho!" Feeling inspired? Take part in MySide: sidegallery.co.uk/whats-on/myside

💙 It is Mental Health Awareness Week and we're sharing "Letters from Ernestine K" by Stefan Dolfen. Made inside a psychiatric institution in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the preoject explors mental illness, care and representation. 📸 See more: sidegallery.co.uk/collection/let…

📣 The AmberSide Trust is looking for a new Treasurer. You’ll help oversee financial planning and support the future of the AmberSide Collection as part of our Board of Trustees. 🔗 More info: sidegallery.co.uk/jobs

📦 Are you an independent creator? We’re looking for new stock for the Side online shop from independent creators. Stock must already be produced. Send an outline & RRP to: side.gallery@amber-online.com Subject line: "Side Store: Independent Creator Stock Submission"

🌊 MySide: Coastal Colour Harbours, estuaries, beaches. Colour found in working boats, sea light, reflections, worn facades and the surfaces people live with every day. Read the blog: sidegallery.co.uk/blog/myside-co… Submit to MySide: sidegallery.co.uk/whats-on/myside

🎉 Big congratulations to photographer (and InSide Community member) Hazel Plater for having two portraits selected for the second round of judging for the Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize 2026. 🤞 they get through the next round! 🔗 more info: hazelplater.myportfolio.com

🏭 Newcastle upon Tyne, 1971 The city before the Quayside apartments, bars and office blocks. Do you remember this view before the Quayside changed?

📸 Join us! InSide is a meet-up for photographers working in documentary. A space to share work, ask questions, and build community. Next meeting: 🗓️ Tue 25 May, 6–8pm 📍Meet outside the Northumberland Building, Northumbria University, NE1 8SG 🔗 sidegallery.co.uk/whats-on/event…

🌼 Yellow Fields Forever, Felton, Northumberland Lewis Jackson shows how colour is part of a place’s identity. In rural landscapes, it’s not only landmarks that people recognise. Sometimes it’s the colour of a field in bloom. Submit to MySide - sidegallery.co.uk/whats-on/myside

📷 Today marks 47 years since Thatcher’s first day as PM. By the end of the 1980s, Meadow Well was living with unemployment and cuts that followed. This image shows one response to that tension. "Thatcherella" created as a sharp and satirical local response to national politics.

🌸 Carnevale, Cassino, early 1980s Dressed as a flower. Taking the job very seriously. 📸 by Anna Arnone, from the series "Italians". One of the many international stories held in the AmberSide Collection.

✊ May Bank Holiday. A day off work, with a history in workers’ rights and public protest. Take a look T. Dan Smith’s May Day photographs of Newcastle in 1963, where labour politics, union pride and civic life all met at a parade. Read more: sidegallery.co.uk/blog/may-day-1…

⛴️ Seafarers, 1987 by Mik Critchlow The Shields Ferry crosses between North and South Shields in approximately 7 minutes, taking just under 25,000 journeys and carrying around 500,000 passengers each year. A short crossing. But long enough to wish you’d brought a coat.

🎡 Pleasure Beach, South Shields, August 2025 by Anna Ellis “I grew up visiting South Shields… wandering the Pleasure Beach with hazy gaze; the colours kaleidoscopic.” Shared as part of MySide: Local Colour. Submit your work: sidegallery.co.uk/whats-on/myside

🩰 North Shields Library is hosting a screening of Still Here (Amber Films, 2018) in support of Dewi Lewis Publishing’s Kickstarter for a new extended reprint of Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen’s Step by Step. Screening info: sidegallery.co.uk/whats-on/cinem… Kickstarter: kickstarter.com/projects/dewi-…

🪨 “A place formed by collective labour is photographed through a collective practice.” Our new blog we take a look at "Working the Landscape: Images of Frosterley" and the politics of making documentary collectively in the North East. Read: sidegallery.co.uk/blog/working-t… 🪨

❤️ St George's Day Between 2003–09, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen photographed life inside homes on the Byker Wall Estate, Newcastle. In Byker Revisited, the St George’s flag appears within everyday family life, in a community made by people of many backgrounds living side by side.

☕ Submitted to our open call MySide: Local Colour, David Potts photographs The Rendezvous Cafe in Whitley Bay. A long-standing seafront cafe called by David “a place of comfort, laughter, solitude and company”. 📸 Submit to your photography to MySide: sidegallery.co.uk/whats-on/myside

🚸 Robert Munoz worked as a press photographer in the 70s-80s. But some of his favourite images came between assignments, out on streets. The Child in the City brings together photos of children's everyday life, from Paris to Mariupol. Explore more: sidegallery.co.uk/blog/robert-mu…