Critchlow returned to the site over several years, photographing the camp and its routines from a position of rare trust. “Anybody with cameras down there would be chased,” he recalled, “because the seacoalers would have thought they were working for the Social Security. I was allowed to photograph as and when I required.” His quiet observational work captures the grit, resilience and complexities of the group’s daily life.

Speaking of the project Critchlow explained: "I took these photographs between 1981 and 1983. My cousin Trevor was working as a seacoaler and he told me that the rights to the beach had been sold to a private contractor, who was blocking the route they had traditionally taken. I went down there with Trevor to photograph the concrete blocks as evidence against the private contractor. It became a relationship from then on: I was taking photographs around the camp as the relationship developed."

The work marked the beginning of a wider collaboration between the community and Amber. Critchlow’s relationship with Trevor helped facilitate Amber’s 1985 feature film Seacoal, and Side’s commissioning of Chris Killip’s now well-known photographic series on the same subject.

Mik Critchlow (1955–2023) was a British social documentary photographer whose work centred on the mining town of Ashington in Northumberland, where he was born and lived for much of his life. Working with deep local knowledge and long-term commitment, Critchlow documented the everyday lives of the community, producing an intimate and unsentimental body of work shaped by trust, familiarity and lived experience.

Critchlow’s images are rooted in solidarity, offering a grounded view of working-class life in transition. In 1987 Critchlow wrote, "During the past few years I have documented the area in which I was born, educated and now live. I see my work in the context of a long-term plan – working within a community during a period of rapid social and environmental change."