Greatham Creek
Ian Macdonald
Photographic
Photography of a quiet settlement of fishermen’s cabins and houseboats on the north bank of the Tees Estuary.
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.
Harry Morrison Collection
Harry Morrison
Photographic
Image of the North East, with a particular focus on Tyneside, Newcastle's Quayside, and Northumberland taken in the 1950s. Alongside images of Belfast, Liverpool and London, taken in the late 1940s.
High Row (1973)
Amber Films
Film and Video
Documentary reconstruction of the working lives of coalminers at this small drift mine, high in the Pennines, near Alston in Cumbria.
Honnos My Fiddler
Pentti Sammallahti
Photographic
A photographic series documenting Romani communities in Transylvania in the early 1980s, focusing on daily life, family structures and cultural practices within rural village settings.
Horden Victory Club
Martin Figura
Photographic
A portrait of Horden Victory Club in 2000, focusing on its annual Leek Show and the role of the workingmen’s club in sustaining community life in a former County Durham pit town.
Images of Youth in Cumbria
John Rigby
Photographic
A portrait series developed in 1990, exploring youth identity in Cumbria through collaborative, constructed images shaped by the subjects’ own choices of dress, setting and pose.
In Fading Light (1989)
Amber Films | Tom Hadaway
Film and Video
Written by local writer Tom Hadaway, this feature drama explores interpersonal drama and resilience in the declining North Shields fishing industry.
It's the Pits (1995)
Amber Films
Film and Video
A video documentary made with youth workers and young people, looking at the lives of young people in East Durham and the lack of facilities for them after the closure of the area's last coal mines.
Jellyfish (1973)
Amber Films | Peter Roberts
Film and Video
An early Amber animation experiment manipulating still imagery: people and objects on a beach, generating a pervasive sense of unease in the context of the nuclear threat.
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.