Bitter Harvest
David Lurie
Photographic
Photographic documentation of fruit farm labour in South Africa’s Western Cape in 1989, captured five years before the end of apartheid.
Amberside Collection
The AmberSide Collection is a vast body of documentary photography and film dedicated to preserving the working-class experience. Featuring over 20,000 photographs and 100 films, it captures social and industrial life in the North East of England and beyond, with contributions from both local and internationally renowned photographers and filmmakers.
Founded in 1968 by Murray Martin, the Amber Film & Photography Collective set out to create a lasting record of working-class culture. The collection includes works documenting key aspects of everyday life, social struggles, and industrial change. It also features historic projects such as The Building of the Tyne Bridge and the photography of Jimmy Forsyth.
Side’s values are rooted in a concern for working-class, marginalised, or threatened lives and landscapes, both in the UK and abroad. Housed at Side and safeguarded by the AmberSide Trust, the collection remains a vital cultural resource, ensuring that the social history of the North East and wider working-class communities is preserved for future generations.
Bowes Line (1975)
Amber Films
Film and Video
A film about the rope-hauled raIlway, built in the 1820s by George Stephenson, which linked Kibblesworth Colliery with Jarrow Staithes, facilitating the transport of coal to ships on the River Tyne.
Building the Tyne Bridge
Dorman Long Collection
Photographic
Construction of the Tyne Bridge, officially known as the George V Bridge, as meticulously documented through a series of industrial photographs by Dorman Long and Co.
Byker (1983)
Amber Films | Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen
Film and Video
A partly dramatised documentary film built around Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen's photographs of the Newcastle terraced community, demolished to make way for the Byker Wall Estate in the 1970s.
Byker Revisited
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen
Photographic
A portrait of life in the Byker Wall Estate, capturing the changing community that replaced the original streets Konttinen photographed in the 1970s.
Can I Say Shalom?
Miriam Reik
Photographic
A personal documentary series shot in the 1990s, in which Miriam Reik returns to her North West London Jewish community, exploring identity, memory and belonging through intimate photography.
Can't Beat It Alone (1985)
Amber Current Affairs Unit
Film and Video
An exploration of social and political strategies for the Left, which grew out of engagement between Amber and coalfield community, anti-nuclear, and peace movement groups in the mid 1980s.
Coke to Coke
Peter Fryer
Photographic
A photographic project tracing the closure of Derwenthaugh Coke Works and the rise of the Metro Centre, capturing a dramatic shift from industrial labour to consumer culture in 1980s Tyneside.
Visual Culture
Slide sets of original photography & copied imagery, an extraordinary library originally developed in the 1970s & 80s for higher education: a rich and surprising celebration of C19th & C20th iconography.
Licensing & Usage Requests
Photographic exhibitions, videos, clips, trailers and each month's featured film are free. For personal use Amber's feature dramas, feature documentaries and film shorts are available as pay per view. See details of our Educational Screening Licence or contact us.