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Thursday 11am - 5pm Friday 11am - 5pm Saturday 11am - 5pm Sunday 11am - 5pm

Side Gallery

Dedicated to Documentary Photography since 1977.
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Side Gallery is committed to exhibiting the best in international humanist documentary, its concerns rooted in a long-term engagement with working class, marginalised and threatened communities in the North of England – and by extension with the experiences of those documented by some of the finest photographers working across the world. It is committed to preserving and making accessible these ex

traordinary bodies of work, whilst using them to inform, lever and sustain the new production that will continue to take documentary practice forward. Side is centrally concerned with visual narratives: the quality of the imagery; the aesthetic and moral questions that are raised; sharing visions of the world and the marginalised experience to which they are able to give such insistent power.

04/06/2026

🌿 Lost Summer by Alys Tomlinson

Between June and August 2020, Alys Tomlinson photographed teenagers aged 15 to 19 whose school proms had been cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The portraits were made in north London, close to where the young people lived. Dressed in the outfits they would have worn to prom, they were photographed in gardens, backyards and local parks rather than school halls or hotel function rooms.

Many had also had their final exams cancelled, leaving no formal marker for the end of school.

Lost Summer records that specific moment six years ago, when a familiar rite of passage was removed from the lives of young people across the UK.

The series is part of the AmberSide Collection.

📸 Lost Summer, June–August 2020 © Alys Tomlinson

03/06/2026

🔥 From the Side archive - poster for "Nicaragua: Susan Meiselas", shown at Side in 1982.

Susan Meiselas first travelled to Nicaragua 48 years ago, in June 1978. It was her first experience working in conflict photography, and she stayed with the story for just over a year, photographing a country moving through fear, resistance and revolution.

Her images follow the final months of the Somoza regime, the rise of popular resistance and the Sandinista revolution of 1979. They became some of the most widely recognised photographs of the period, but their power is not only in the drama of conflict. Meiselas’ work also asks what it means to witness history as it is still unfolding, and what responsibility a photograph carries once it begins to circulate in the world.

📸 Poster for Nicaragua: Susan Meiselas, Side Photography Gallery, 1982. Image © Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos

02/06/2026

⛰️ Eastgate Cement Works, Weardale, 1991.

Ten years before the cement works closed, Dave Thomas photographed the overwhelming scale of this manual industry. Cement production here is physical, dirty and relentless, with workers both part of and altering the world around them.

Explore the full series: sidegallery.co.uk/collection/eastgate-cement-works

📸 Eastgate Cement Works, 1991 © Dave Thomas

31/05/2026

🏰 Today is Northumberland Day, a celebration of the county’s history, landscape and community life.

This photograph of Warkworth Castle, taken in 1980, comes from Lambton Visual Aids, the educational slide library created by the Amber Film & Photography Collective. Through photographs like this, LVA documented the North East not as a tourist destination, but as a lived place shaped by people, memory and everyday experience.

Warkworth Castle has stood above the River Coquet for centuries, woven into the landscape and identity of Northumberland itself. Here, the castle is framed through the stone archway of its outer walls, turning a familiar landmark into something more enclosed, textured and physical.

As part of Northumberland Day, we’d love to see your own photographs of the county for "MySide: Local Colour". The places, colours and details that speak to Northumberland's past and present.

Submit your images here: sidegallery.co.uk/whats-on/myside

📸 Warkworth Castle, 1980 © Lambton Visual Aids (AmberSide Collection)

30/05/2026

🖤 New on the Side blog - "Kellingley: The Last Deep Coal Mine in England" by Sam Welburn.

Three weeks before Kellingley Colliery closed, Welburn photographed the surface of the pit: quiet rooms, workspaces, machinery, notices and the remains of a place built around hard, physical labour.

Known locally as Big K, Kellingley was the last working deep coal mine in England. When it closed in December 2015, it marked more than the end of one site. It was the close of an industry that had shaped lives, families, politics and communities for generations.

Published ten years on, Welburn’s photographs do not look for spectacle. They stay with what was left behind, and with the bitter feeling of an ending that still carries through the landscape.

📰 Read the blog: sidegallery.co.uk/blog/kellingley-the-last-deep-coal-mine-in-england
🛍️ Purchase signed copies of the book: shop.amber-online.com/products/kellingley-the-last-deep-coal-mine-in-england

📸 Kellingley, 2015–2025 © Sam Welburn

29/05/2026

Everyone at Side and The AmberSide Trust is saddened to hear of the passing of Bruce Rae.

A frequent collaborator with Amber and Side, Rae made some of the most enigmatic images of industry and North Eastern communities in the AmberSide Collection.

In remembrance, we are sharing two photographs from Shipbuilding on the Tyne, made at Neptune Yard, Wallsend. These images show Rae’s remarkable attention to scale, labour and the atmosphere of industrial places. The workers appear small within the vast structure of the shipyard, but never incidental. They remain central to the life of the image.

We are grateful for his work and his lasting contribution to the Collection. Our thoughts are with his family, friends and all who knew him.

See more from Shipbuilding on the Tyne: sidegallery.co.uk/collection/shipbuilding-on-the-tyne

📸 Shipbuilding on the Tyne, Neptune Yard, Wallsend, 1983 © Bruce Rae

28/05/2026

🌼 “Observatory Hill rises up above Durham and overlooks the city’s Cathedral and World Heritage Site. In May and June, the hill is covered in buttercups and other wildflowers.”

Kevin Edworthy’s Observatory Hill, Durham captures a place shaped as much by seasonal ritual as landscape. As he writes: “At the end of the summer term, a popular Durham University tradition is to gather with your mates on top of the hill and watch the sun setting over the Cathedral.”

“Students will fetch old armchairs and other student collectibles such as road signs and traffic cones, up to the summit, to make their evenings more comfortable.”

📸 Observatory Hill, Durham, 2024 © Kevin Edworthy

Feeling inspired? Submit your photographs to "MySide: Local Colour": sidegallery.co.uk/whats-on/myside

27/05/2026

🎬 "Made Together: Amber Films & The Workshop Movement" is now open at Tyneside Cinema.

The display explores Amber Films’ place within the 1980s Workshop Movement, when collective, non-commercial and regionally rooted filmmaking was given national support.

With examples from stills, scripts, notes, flyers and archival material, "Made Together" looks at how Amber developed films through long-term relationships with communities, combining research, documentary observation, drama, local knowledge and trust.

With a focus on Keeping Time (1983), Seacoal (1985), Double Vision (1986) and In Fading Light (1989), the display traces a filmmaking practice shaped by class, labour, gender, regional identity and everyday life.

📍 The Gallery, Floor 3, Tyneside Cinema
📅 From 26 May
🎟️ Free to visit

Find out more: sidegallery.co.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/made-together

📸 ACTT Workshop Declaration Handbook, June 1984
📸 Production Continuity Polaroids, Keeping Time, 1982–83 © Amber Films
📸 Behind the Scenes Production Still, Seacoal, 1984/85 © Amber Films

26/05/2026

🔥 “It’s my vision of Hell, that - and yet I loved working in the coke works.”

Peter Fryer documented Derwenthaugh Coke Works between 1986 and 1989 as the plant closed in the aftermath of the Miners’ Strike. The works sat on the south bank of the Tyne near Swalwell, on a site that had previously held Crowley’s Ironworks, once the largest ironworks in Europe.

At the same moment Derwenthaugh was shutting down, the Metrocentre was rising a few miles away inside a newly designated Enterprise Zone. Fryer’s project follows that political shift directly: from dangerous industrial labour to the new promise of consumption and “enterprise culture.”

Here we're sharing Fryer's images of the works themselves, photographs that hold onto the physical reality of the works. Fire, smoke, toxic dust, heat and exhaustion. And workers moving through conditions most people would never willingly enter.

🔗 Explore the full series: sidegallery.co.uk/collection/coke-to-coke

📸 Coke to Coke: Derwenthaugh Cokeworks, 1986–1989 © Peter Fryer

25/05/2026

☀️ Bank holiday plans...

📸 Village is a Global World, 1994 © Jindřich Štreit

Address

5-9 Side
Newcastle Upon Tyne
NE13JE

Opening Hours

Thursday	11am - 5pm
Friday	11am - 5pm
Saturday	11am - 5pm
Sunday	11am - 5pm

Website

http://www.sidegallery.co.uk/, https://www.justgiving.com/ambersidetrust

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