MySide

MySide is a public source documentary photography initiative created by the AmberSide Trust and Side, designed to capture the persona, everyday experiences of our community. It is an open call project inviting the public to document their world through photography to create a living archive of identity, culture, and social change. 

This initiative is part of Side’s commitment to community storytelling, making photography more accessible and ensuring that real voices and experiences are represented. Through MySide you contribute to a collective portrait, reflecting themes of identity, resilience, heritage, and our social reality. 

Every three months we’ll announce a new theme for participants to explore. You can submit your images via instagram (by using #MySide and tagging @amber_sidegallery) or directly using our: online upload form

All submissions will go to the Side team and we’ll review them against the below criteria: 

• Photos taken in the five years to keep things fresh and relevant to life today.

• Strong images with good composition that stand out.

• Photos that have feeling, spark emotion, create a connection or tell a meaningful story.

• Images that capture powerful moments, people and places with a strong sense of narrative.

• Creative approaches that bring a fresh perspective or highlight unexpected details.

• A clear point of view that gives your image purpose and impact.

• Authentic photos that feel real and true to lived experience.

Selected images will be showcased on our social media and website, for example as image highlights, as part of online exhibitions, and/or blog posts. Your images will always be credited to you. 

Beyond the digital, we may select certain MySide images for exhibition display in regional or national locations. Similarly the most impactful images may be curated into zines or books, creating a physical record of the project. Your images will always be credited to you. 

Uploads cannot exceed 1mb, so your submission should be a lower res version of your image. If we are going to use your image in any of our projects and need a different resolution we will be in contact to let you know and to request high res versions of your files.

Anyone! MySide is open to all, whether you take pictures on your phone or you’re an experienced photographer. This project is all about authenticity, not technical skill. By sharing your photographs you’re helping to tell a real story of life today - one image at a time.

Documenting the Self was all about personal identity - how you see yourself, how you fit into the world, and what makes you you. We asked our audience to think about ways to represent yourself, your identity, and your everyday world. Explore some of our highlighted submissions below:

Sophie Tuckwell Social Media Post

We loved the photo Dylan and Ziggy taken by Sophie Tuckwell. It was one of our fist MySide Submissions and we felt her image creatively embraced the theme of Documenting the Self by giving us an intimate and humourous glimpse into her day-to-day life.

Adele Mary Reed Social Media Post

Adele Mary Reed shared with MySide a self-portrait on a family holiday in Herefordshire, where she caught a rare moment of quiet. We enjoyed the dreamy and reflective quality of her image and what this captured moment meant to her.

Sergey Novikov Social Media Post

The image titled Family Archive by Sergey Novikov really spoke to us. Its dynamic composition highlights the personal and political themes explored within the image ("Thank God For Immigrants"), and creatively documents some of the struggles people are confronting today.

Daragh Drake Interview: Documenting the Gaelic Games

Our first MySide interview, we spoke with Daragh Drake about his MySide submission and how documenting the Gaelic Games has deepened his connection to the Gaelic community.

Matt MacPake Social Media Portfolio

Matt's project documents his children, Dottie & Roo, as they grow and explore their place in the world. We selected multiple images from Matt to include as a social media portfolio that went out across Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, X, and Linkedin, to over 20k followers.

MySide: Putting the Photographer in the Frame

Exploring MySide submissions which ask: "who am I, and how do I show that?" through submitted self-portraits.

Interview with Phyllis Christopher

We spoke with Phyllis Christopher to reflect on the politics of visibility, the trust at the heart of her practice and why photographing our communities with care and intention matters more than ever.

Places That Made Us was all about you and your environment - the landscapes, neighbourhoods, buildings or natural spaces that have helped to form who you are and explain where you’re from. Selected submissions are shared with out audiences digitally and physically, below you'll find some of our highlighted artists and work from this open call out:

An Interview with Hazel Plater

We asked Newcastle based photographer Hazel Plater to give us some behind-the-scenes access and stories from four of her most recent projects. Exploring 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.

Interview with Payam Akramipour

This MySide blog introduces Payam Akramipour, an Iranian photographer whose work explores the realities of life in Kermanshah and beyond with honesty and depth. A graduate of the University of Tehran with over a decade of experience, Payam’s work reflects on everyday life, and his photographs look at economics, resilience and the environments that shape people’s futures.

Reflections on the Quayside: Joe McCarty

Photographer Joe McCarty takes us back to Newcastle’s Quayside Market. He remembers visiting as a boy in the 1940s, then returns in the 1970s with his camera to capture the characters, the bustle and the bridges that framed this iconic place. The blog pairs his words with photographs from the 1970s, offering a vivid portrait of the market across time.

Antonio Balisciano: Beneath Vesuvius

Photographer Antonio Balisciano shares his series "Beneath Vesuvius" as a photo essay exploring shared moments of leisure on the shoreline in Naples, Italy. Through Antonio's work, and with Vesuvius fixed on the horizon, the shoreline becomes more than a place to cool off. It holds memory, culture and community, a living portrait of a city and its people.

Anna Maren Kristofova Social Media Post

Anna Maren Kristofova, currently studying for her A-levels in London on a scholarship for her distinctive photographic style. A unique image of the entrance to a swimming pool, her image explores change and identity: themes at the heart of Places That Made Us.

Andrew Mitchell Social Media Post

We were excited to receive a submission from Andrew Mitchell looking at Gateshead in change, their evocative image of the tearing down of the Dunston Rocket and accompanying story of community reinvention hit to the heart of community changes being felt across the UK.

Yevhen Samuchenko Social Media Post

Ukrainian photographer, Yevhen Samuchenko, shares a powerful image and personal narrative from the Odesa region that reflects on how landscape holds memory, identity, and resilience.

MySide: A Kind of Stillness

This MySide article brings together quiet, reflective photographs by Kip Harris in rural Idaho, Maria Gabriela Portaluppi Cervantes in Rio Verde and Esmeraldas, Ecuador, Matt Marshall on Dartmoor National Park, Keith Thompson at North Shields Fish Quay, Joseph Wilson in Ashington, and Rob Knight in Kilchoan, West Ardnamurchan. Taken across very different places, the images share a focus on stillness, memory, and how landscapes hold histories.

Views From Around the World

This MySide photoessay looks outward to everyday life across the world, bringing together quiet, lived-in views that show how personal experience, memory, and place travel across borders without losing their local meaning. Rather than grand or touristic scenes, the images focus on ordinary moments that reveal how people see and understand the places they live in.

The photographs were made by Negin Soleimani in Isfahan, Iran, Qiuyu Chen in Yunnan Province, China, Mahboobeh Rabiee Karahrody in Nicosia, Cyprus, Janne Hernes in Galway Bay, Ireland, Lēf Pankratz in Winnipeg, Canada, Maria Strizhneva in Listvyagovo, Russia, Mateus Mossmann in São José, Santa Catarina, Brazil, Mainak Ghosh in the Sundarbans, Ali Aminzadeh in Shiraz, Iran, Erica Hilario in New York, USA, Léna Piani in Ponte Altu, Corsica, Elijah Kagan in the North Sea, Xingyu Dai in Hubei, China, and Joe Zhao in Syracuse, USA.

Ben Hodgson Social Media Post

Newcastle-based photographer Ben Hodgson reflects on the demolition of Toys ‘R’ Us at the Metrocentre in Gateshead, using a familiar local scene to explore memory, nostalgia, and how shared places quietly shape different generations.

Through an open call, we invited photographers to share something personal. The submissions reflect how people see themselves, and the spaces, streets and memories that have shaped their lives. The photographs are intimate and honest, offering glimpses into daily routines, quiet moments, family life and landscapes both familiar and distant. Together, they form a wider conversation about how people live, remember and belong.

Selected for display at Side were 12 international photographers, from the North East, UK, Europe, and as far as Nepal.

Ways We Celebrate focused on how people marked moments in their lives and communities, from public festivals and seasonal traditions to smaller, private rituals. The theme invited photographs of occasions like Diwali, Bonfire Night, Christmas, New Year, local events, shared meals, and quiet moments of reflection, showing how people come together and find joy, comfort, and connection in the places they share.

Anna Ellis Social Media Post

Anna Ellis captures a quiet, personal moment at Notting Hill Carnival, focusing on a single figure in worship to show how celebration can be both collective and deeply individual.

Emma Eloise Smith Social Media Post

Emma Eloise Smith photographs her children watching fireworks from outside the home where her dad once did the same, a small Bonfire Night moment that connects family and place.

Michelle Webster Social Media Post

Michelle Webster photographs the Woodchurch bonfire on the Wirral, capturing a community tradition as it continues under new rules and reflecting how shared celebrations are shaped and protected by the people who hold them.

Michele Allan Interview

Interview with Michele Allan, a documentary photographer based in the North East of England, whose photographs are made from within public events rather than from the sidelines. Talking through images taken across places like Durham, Newcastle, Bowburn, and Coxhoe, Allan reflects on photographing shared gatherings, attention, and how communities in the region come together to mark identity and history.

The Hoppings in Three Acts Social Media Post

Bringing together three views of The Hoppings in Newcastle, showing the fair at its peak, at closing time, and in the quiet aftermath. Photographs by Richard Simpson, Lorna MacKay, and Michaela Simpson trace how a single event moves through the city, from shared excitement to the traces it leaves behind on the Town Moor.