Byker Revisited

Forty years ago Finnish photographer Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen came to Byker as a founder member of the Amber film and photography collective. Her photographs from the working class Tyneside terraced streets became an exhibition, book and film. Studied and feted across the world, the work was a celebration of the community that was demolished to make way for architect Ralph Erskine's visionary Byker Wall. "Byker Revisited" is Sirkka's return to Byker. Since 2003 she has been building a new portrait of the people and the estate - opening up the richly complex, often transient and fragile nature of contemporary urban lives and the architecture that is part of the story.