Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1948 Myllykoski, Soppola, Finland

Year of Migration to the UK: 1968

Biography

Photographer and filmaker, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen was born in Myllykoski (currently part of the city of Kouvola), in the municipality of Sippola, Finland, on 1 January 1948. Inspired by her aunt Oili, an amateur photographer who took 'great spontaneous pictures' of her and her brothers growing up, Konttinen started taking photographs aged 12 (1854 Photography).

Konttinen came to England in 1968 to study filmmaking at Regent Street Polytechnic in London (now University of Westminster) as there was no comparable film school in Finland at that time. She completed a foundation year, which focused on photography, and joined a number of final year students, including the future prominent filmmaker Murray Martin, in co-founding the Amber film and photography collective. In 1969 the collective moved to Newcastle-upon-Tyne to document the lives of local working class communities, in Konttinen's words, 'without patronising, without caricaturing it' (TateShots). From 1969 Konttinen lived in Byker, an eastern area of Newcastle. She set up a studio in a disused hairdressing salon and offered residents free portraits. For seven years she photographed and interviewed the residents of this area, until her own house was demolished, producing a series of landscapes exploring the aftermath of the County Durham pit closures. In 1972 Konttinen was appointed Northern Arts & Northern Gasboard Fellow in Creative Photography 1972-1974, Bede Gallery, in nearby Jarrow. Konttinen continued to work in Byker for some time, resulting in her seminal publication and film Byker (1983), inspired by meeting ex- miners who used to keep allotments in Easington and Ryhope and who opened her eyes ‘to the legacy of mining and to a landscape which is surreal at times’ (Evening Chronicle 2003, p. 14).Since its creation, Konttinen's documentation of Byker has been recognised as a key photographic and filmic account of the rich British working-class culture on the eve of its destruction. In 2003–09 she returned to document the Byker Wall Estate that replaced the original community, resulting in Byker Revisited/Today I'm With You book and film. Konttinen's other long-term photography and film projects have included Letters to Katja (1994), about her visit to Finland after a 23-year stay in England, taking along her daughter Katja on this trip to rediscover her roots; Step by Step/Keeping Time (1982–88), in which she explored the dreams and realities of a group of mothers and daughters at a North Shields dancing school; Writing in the Sand (1973–98), a celebration of the life of beaches in north eastern England, and Hoppings, documenting the travelling fair that visits Newcastle’s Town Moor every year, the largest of its kind in Europe (1971–72).

In 1980 Konttinen became the first photographer since the Cultural Revolution to have her work exhibited by the British Council in the People's Republic of China. In 2011 Amber collective's films and Konttinen's photographs were inscribed in the UNESCO Memory of the World register as 'of outstanding national value and importance to the United Kingdom.' In 2012, films based on her photographs were screened at the SFMOMA and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and the Goethe Institute in Washington, D.C., as well as at several venues in Europe, including Le Bal in Paris. In 2016, her photographs were included in the inaugural Living Cities installation at Tate Modern's Switch House (later renamed the Blavatnik Building). As she noted, 'It was a huge surprise for me to have a room all to myself [...] Beyond the personal, it is uplifting to see documentary photography on such a prestigious platform, when the British art establishment has pretty much snubbed it for the past two or three decades' (1854 Photography). In 2018, Konttinen curated Women by Women, a major display of the work of five female photographers working in the north east during the 1970s-2000s, organised as part of the Idea of North season at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Newcastle.

More than 40 years since its co-foundation by Kottinen, the Amber collective, with its Side Gallery dedicated to exhibiting social documentary work, an archive of photographic commissions and some 50 films to its name, continues to pursue its original mission of documenting and giving voice to working class and marginalised communities in the region through film and photography. Sirkka-Liisa Kottinen continues to live and work in Newcastle. Konttinen's works are held in a number of UK public collections, including Tate; Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the AmberSide Collection Trust, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Related books

James Leggott, In Fading Light: The Films of the Amber Collective (New York: Berghahn Books, 2020)
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Byker Revisited (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Northumbria University Press, 2009)
'Unearthing Lost Beauty', Evening Chronicle, 8 August 2003, p. 14
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Writing in the Sand: On the Beaches of North East England (Stockport: Dewi Lewis, 2000)
Paul Jobling, 'Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen. The Meaning of Urban Culture in Byker', History of Photography, Vol. 17, No. 3, 1993, pp. 253-262
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Step by Step (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1989)
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Byker (London: Cape, 1983)
Keith Armstrong and Huw Beynon eds., Hello, Are You Working? Memories of the Thirties in the North East of England (with photographs by Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen and drawings by Peter Dixon) (South Wellfield: Strong Words, 1977)

Public collections

Related organisations

Amber Collective (co-founder)
Regent Street Polytechnic Film School (student)
UNESCO Memory of the World register (listed)

Selected exhibitions

Another Beginning, Byker Community Centre, Byker, England (2019)
Women by Women, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle, England (curator) (2018)
The Coal Coast, Side Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England (2017)
Byker/Living Cities, Tate Modern, London, England (2016-17)
Coal Staithes, St. Mary’s Cultural Centre, Gateshead, England (2015)
Byker Revisited, Side Gallery, Newcastle, England (2009)
The Coal Coast, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, England (2003)
National Film Theatre, London, England and Museum of Photography of Moderna Museet Stockholm, Sweden (2000)
My Finnish Roots, Side Gallery, Newcastle, England and elsewhere regionally (1994)
Writing in the Sand, Side Gallery, Newcastle, England (1991)
Portfolio Gallery, Edinburgh (1989)
UK Pavilion, Leeds, England (1989)
Step By Step, Side Gallery, Newcastle, and touring (1984-85)
Step By Step, Ffotogallery, Cardiff, Wales (1984)
Byker, Side Gallery, Newcastle, England (1983)
Byker, Royal Festival Hall, London, England (1983)
Hoppings, Side Gallery, Newcastle, England and touring (1981)
Byker, The Peking Art Gallery, Beijing, China and touring in The People’s Republic of China (1980) (British Council)
Photographs by Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Northern Arts & Northern Gasboard Fellow in Creative Photography 1972-1974, Bede Gallery, Jarrow, England (1974)
Newcastle and Byker in Camera, Bede Gallery, Jarrow, England and touring (1971)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen]

Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.

Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen artist