There’s a particular kind of coldness that seems to cling to photographs of Britain’s post-industrial landscape. Concrete housing blocks, empty streets and buildings stripped of ornament can make the environment feel almost indifferent to the people living in it. Having lived in the UK, I recognise something in these images that feels at odds with the country’s international image, which has lost some of its shine in recent years. Yet the longer I look, the harder it becomes to separate the bleakness of the surroundings from the lives unfolding within them. Running at Newcastle Contemporary Art through 29 November, Under Development: What Happens When Cities Change? brings together more than five decades of documentary photography from Tyneside and East London.
Featuring work by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Chris Killip, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Martine Franck, Nick Hedges, David Hoffman, John Davies and Paul Trevor, among others, the exhibition draws on the AmberSide Collection and Four Corners Archive. Nearly three hundred miles apart, these two regions share histories shaped by river trade, industry and working-class communities, followed by industrial decline, housing clearance and ambitious programmes of regeneration. The archives documented these changes as they happened, capturing not only the transformation of streets and buildings but also the lives caught up in decisions about what cities should become.
What’s particularly striking is the contrast between the austerity of these environments and the lives unfolding inside them. In one photograph, a young woman fixes her hair while her shirtless boyfriend plays electric guitar on the couch. There’s something wonderfully ordinary about the scene. He plays; she gets ready; life goes on regardless of what the outside world looks like. The building might appear cold and impersonal, but inside, two people are absorbed in their own small world. That can make viewers think about how little an exterior can tell us about the people living behind it.
Another photograph shows two young children clinging to each other beside a doorway, their mother looking directly at the camera. Behind them, gold curtains patterned with pink flowers cover the windows, while decorative glasses sit on a side table. Against the plainness of the surrounding architecture, these details draw the eye. The room has a character of its own, impossible to guess from the outside. I found myself wondering about the objects: were they brought from somewhere else, collected over the years, or simply chosen because they belonged there? The photograph offers no answers. What stays is the contrast between a home that feels individual and a building that could be mistaken for countless others. The architecture is standardised; the lives inside it aren’t.
It’s easy to look at these images and see only what has disappeared: industries, neighbourhoods and ways of life displaced by redevelopment. But the photographs preserve something that statistics about urban change can’t capture so easily: the ordinary texture of people’s lives before, during and beyond it. A guitar on a couch, patterned curtains, children holding each other close. At a time when housing and regeneration continue to shape Britain’s future, these images leave us with a question that remains unresolved: when we rebuild a city, whose idea of a better future are we building towards?
Under Development: What Happens When Cities Change? runs from 17 October to 29 November 2026 at Newcastle Contemporary Art.
Eldon Square Interior Shopping Precinct, 1980 © Lambton Visual Aids (Courtesy of the AmberSide Trust)
Scotswood Road, Nesham Street, 1961 © T Dan Smith Archive - AmberSide Collection (Courtesy of the AmberSide Trust)
Scotswood Road, Easter 1963 © T Dan Smith Archive - AmberSide Collection (Courtesy of the AmberSide Trust)
Stephanie, Trainee Nurse, With Fiance Stephen, Byker Revisited, 2005 © Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen (Courtesy of the AmberSide Trust)
Killingworth, Modern Housing, 1980 © Lambton Visual Aids (Courtesy of the AmberSide Trust)
Eldon Square Interior Shopping Precinct, 1980 © Lambton Visual Aids (Courtesy of the AmberSide Trust)
Eldon Square and Carpark, 1980 © Lambton Visual Aids (Courtesy of the AmberSide Trust)
Maryam, Byker Revisited, 2007 © Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen (Courtesy of the AmberSide Trust)
Scotswood Road, October 1963 © T Dan Smith Archive - AmberSide Collection (Courtesy of the AmberSide Trust)
