Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen

Konttinen, Sirkka-Liisa (b. 1948), Finnish-born photographer and film-maker, resident in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. In 1969 she co-founded the film and photography collective Amber, dedicated to engagement with ordinary people in the north-east; Side Photographic Gallery was a later offshoot. Konttinen's first book, Byker (1983), documented a Newcastle community about to be rehoused, conveying in memorable black-and-white images human warmth in bleak surroundings. Other books include Letters to Katja (1994), and studies of the partly untouched, partly post-industrial north-eastern coastline, Writing in the Sand (2000) and The Coal Coast (2003).

— Robin Lenman