Two of Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen’s defining bodies of work, "Byker" and "Byker Revisited", will be shown together this autumn at the 18th Photometria International Photography Festival in Ioannina, Greece.

Curated by Photometria’s Artistic Director Panagiotis Pappas, the exhibition is presented at the Municipal Art Gallery of Ioannina as part of a city-wide programme bringing together more than 50 artists across 10 venues. Founded in 2009, Photometria has developed into an international platform for photography, bringing work from Greece and around the world into exhibition spaces across the city.

Konttinen began photographing Byker soon after arriving in Newcastle from Finland in 1969. She moved into the neighbourhood and became part of a community already facing wholesale redevelopment. Over the following decade, its terraced streets were demolished and residents dispersed as the new Byker Wall estate was built. "Byker" grew out of Konttinen’s life there, combining photographs, interviews and friendships into an account of working-class culture made from within a community undergoing profound change.

More than thirty years later she returned. By then the architecture, population and social life of Byker had changed considerably. Some families remained, while the estate had also become home to people arriving from elsewhere, including refugees and asylum seekers. Konttinen recognised something of her own experience as a young Finnish woman arriving in Newcastle in these newer residents.

Bringing the projects together makes visible more than the physical transformation of one Newcastle neighbourhood. Across forty years, they ask what happens to community when people are displaced, how belonging is negotiated by those who arrive later, and what photography can do when a place refuses to remain fixed.

Part of the 18th Photometria International Photography Festival, running across Ioannina from 26 September to 29 November 2026.