MySide: Hazel Plater

Hazel Plater is a documentary photographer based in Newcastle upon Tyne in the North East of England. She brings together environmental portraits, street photography and sweeping landscapes to tell visual stories and describe the world around her.

Resilience and identity sit at the heart of Hazel’s work. Her immersive approach allows her to spend time with places, communities and individuals, building trust so every frame records both personal stories and the wider social dynamics at play.

Largely self-taught through constant experimentation and the mentorship of fellow photographers, Hazel has exhibited her images, appeared in small-press publications and received the Shutter Hub Newspaper Club YEARBOOK Award 2024.

She now balances commissioned assignments with long-form personal projects, continuing her investigative practice by exploring what shapes communities on familiar Tyneside streets and far beyond.

We asked Hazel to give us some behind-the-scenes access and deep dive into four of her most recent projects:

1. Shipshape, October 2024-Ongoing

Shipshape is a joint project with my good friend and fellow photographer Sasha Mallo Tardiveau and the North East Maritime Trust. Since October 2024, we have visited the community of volunteers in South Shields, UK, who find their sense of purpose through the restoration of historic boats.

We initially photographed in the workshops, and over the winter we got to know the volunteers as they worked, and as we sat around the wood burner with them all together at lunchtimes. We held a small exhibition of these photographs at the Trust in April-May 2025.

Then, in July 2025 we were invited on board the Trust’s 110-year-old restored lifeboat the Henry Frederick Swan heading to Bridlington for the annual Coble Festival there, a coble being a particular type of boat unique to the region. At a maximum speed of 7 knots, it took us 10 hours to Whitby and a further 6 to Bridlington the next day. The journey was not without challenge, with most crew able to use a bucket to pee in, but in Force 6+ conditions, the porta-potty in the unlit whaleback was an unpleasant proposition! 

We are making another exhibition that combines the workshop photographs and the voyage by sea series, getting it out into gallery spaces to help raise awareness of the Trust. Its first appearance will be at Wallsend Library, North Tyneside, 1st – 31st October 2025. It’s really important that the skills involved with restoring and sailing these boats are not lost, plus there are very positive benefits to mental health associated with volunteering.

Donations are welcomed to help the North East Maritime Trust continue its work, Registered Charity No. 1117855: https://nemaritimetrust.org.uk/

2. The Geordie Riviera, 2023-Ongoing

The Geordie Riviera is one of my long-form projects, documenting day-to-day life on the North Tyneside, UK coast. This area includes North Shields, Tynemouth, Cullercoats and Whitley Bay, and, like most of my work, is an exploration of people and place.

This is the coast I grew up with – since my Mam passed away, I have the family “bucket and spade” photographs from when I was a kid. It’s more than that, though, with people having a variety of experiences of this stretch, at work and at play.

Sometimes I ask for portraits, other times I’m recording things as they are through candid street photography. I especially like to photograph events, such as the Whitley Bay Carnival, which really shows the community spirit that there is here. I also take care to represent the architecture and infrastructure as it is today. It may not look this way forever.

This is an ongoing project and I’m picking up small, relevant commissions in the area, which both broadens the project and allows me to go deeper into local communities. People like I Love North Shields, a community driven publication, have been a great help, both through helping me meet interesting people to photograph and by getting what I’m up to understood in the area.

One of my local commissions was with artist Conrad Milne, who is creating a large collage artwork, ‘Through Shields: Seven Windows on 800 Years’, telling the story of North Shields past and present. This is a new way of collaborating for me, and is something like ‘free jazz’, with me not knowing which photographs will be used in the final pieces. I’m interested in ideas around how I might present The Geordie Riviera project in other ways too.

For now, I have some of my work-in-progress as a photography exhibition touring the region – at Battle Hill Library until 25th September then at Newcastle Civic Centre Arches Gallery from 29th September until 10th October 2025.

3. Vive Le Moment, March-April 2025

Vive Le Moment was a much shorter experience than my personal projects tend to be, taking place over one week in Nantes, France. Again, working in collaboration with Sasha Mallo Tardiveau, we documented life in a care home for older people, many of whom have dementia or other difficulties that mean they can no longer live independently.

We photographed the day-to-day life, such as group movement activities and afternoons on the patio, but we were especially fortunate to arrive on the week that the therapeutic clowns were visiting. This duo allowed us to follow them around, from behind the scenes with them getting dressed and putting on their greasepaint, to interacting with the residents, performing gentle songs and skits to lift people’s spirits.

I had a language barrier here – as my French is not that good, however the clowns were the perfect people to communicate with in nonverbal ways. A smile goes a long way! What was really thought-provoking, was how well the residents responded to the vernissage we delivered at the end of the week – seeing their very recent lives reflected back at them through the power of photography.

The work will next become a physical exhibition, for the residents and their families to experience together. This kind of co-authorship interests me greatly and I hope to continue to work with diverse and interesting communities going forward.

4. The Durham Coalfield, 2024-Ongoing

The Durham Coalfield project stems from my annual attendance at Durham Miners’ Gala, admiring all the banners from the different pit villages and musing about what those places are like now. Despite a severe lack of investment in this already economically challenged area, community spirit runs high.

My work has taken me to many places in the former coalfield, from working with a group in Stanley supporting them to document their own rich community life, to Easington Lane, where I chatted to people on the street while investigating and documenting culturally significant landmarks. I was also commissioned by Redhills Durham Miners’ Hall to make a series of portraits of significant women of the coalfields for International Women’s Day 2025.

The Durham Coalfield is also a long-form project for me, and I hope again to have more commissions in the area that will aid my visual storytelling. I travel by public transport and it’s amazing how well you can get to know an area once you know the main bus routes.

I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time in Peterlee bus station, which, in a roundabout kind of way, led me to be interested in buying a nice, vintage point-and-shoot film camera I saw advertised online, to add to my slightly obsessive collection of them. The seller was a former pit electrician turned washing machine repairman, now retired, who kindly took me around all his youth and present-day stomping grounds in Horden and Peterlee. It’s the people that make these places and I genuinely love documenting my interactions with them.