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Call to expand archive with young photographers

Evie LakeNorth East and Cumbria
News imageSirkka-Liisa Konttinen A black and white photo of a sloping street lined with terraced, uniform houses. The roofs and pavements are covered in light snow, with tyre tracks down the middle of the road. There is a person dressed in all black near the bottom of the hill. Cars line the streets and look to be from the 60s/70s. There are many more roofs covered in snow in the distance.Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen
Under Development: What Happens When Cities Change? has opened in Newcastle

A new exhibition exploring how a city has changed over time has coincided with an open call for young photographers.

Under Development: What Happens When Cities Change? has opened at Newcastle Contemporary Art gallery, featuring images which span more than 50 years from the AmberSide Collection.

Running alongside the exhibition, submissions have opened for Newcastle Now, which has asked photographers under 25 to capture their changing surroundings.

Creative director of AmberSide, Ellen Stone, said she hoped the archive would be a "stronger resource" following the exhibition.

The exhibition also features photographs from Four Corners Archive based in Tower Hamlets in London.

AmberSide said as both areas grew through river trade and industry, both saw large areas of working-class housing cleared and rebuilt and were hit hard by the loss of industries that had shaped them.

Stone said the exhibition was particularly important today, as both areas were once again going through a period of regeneration.

News imageSirkka-Liisa Konttinen A black and white photo showing a collection of nine children sitting and looking into the camera while sitting on various bits of furniture which have been dumped on a patch of grass. The Ouseburn viaduct is visible in the distance with a brick house directly behind the group of young people. Some of them are sitting in an old pram, others on various chairs. There is an abandoned sideboard behind them on the left and two old televisions on the right. None of the kids are smiling and have serious looks on their faces.Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen
The exhibition features Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen who spent a lot of time in Byker through periods of change

Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen is one of the photographers featured in the exhibition.

The Finnish photographer moved to Byker in 1969 and started capturing every day life in Newcastle's inner city as it was undergoing great change with the post-war terraced housing being torn down.

She returned again in 2003 to take photos in the Byker Wall Estate, which had replaced the old housing.

News imageSirkka-Liisa Konttinen A young boy with short, brown hair standing on a window sill which is covered completely by white and pink floral curtains. He has his arms out beside him clutching the curtains and has his eyes closed. He is wearing a grey sport-style vest and purple patterned pyjama bottoms. There is a small telly to the right which a cartoon on it.Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen
Ellen Stone said she wanted to grow AmberSide's archive

Stone said the photos in the archive helped people understand how the city looked and felt in the past, but now they needed to look to the future.

"We have this incredible wealth of resource from our collection, but we're looking for images from young people today about the city," she said.

"Hopefully we'll leave the exhibition with an even stronger resource than we started with."

The exhibition will run until 29 November, meanwhile submissions for the Newcastle Now open call is open until midnight on 1 December.

News imageLambdon Visual Aids A block of brutalist flats which look to be made from grey, corrugated concrete. They are at least three-storeys high and fill the whole frame. The windows are filled with different patterned blinds and curtains, one of the windows is covered by newspaper.Lambdon Visual Aids
The exhibition runs at Newcastle Contemporary Art until 29 November

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