Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen’s journey is like a quiet storm, sweeping in from Finland, settling in Britain’s Northeast, and leaving behind images that hum with life. Born in 1948 in Myllykoski, a tiny blip on the Finnish map, she caught the photography bug early. It started when she was 12, thanks to her auntie Oili’s snapshots of summer family chaos. By 14, she was knee-deep in negatives at a local camera club, and a stint with a Helsinki fashion photographer sealed the deal, this was it for her.

The late ‘60s landed her in London, studying film at Regent Street Polytechnic, but the real turning point came in 1968 when she co-founded the Amber Collective. A year later, they packed up for Newcastle, where she threw herself into Byker, a working-class community on the brink of demolition. She spent seven years living in a doomed terrace, capturing everyday life as the bulldozers loomed. This wasn’t a detached documentary project; she wasn’t just passing through. Konttinen was in it, photographing neighbours, sharing tea, swapping stories, building a visual record of a world that was vanishing before her eyes. Byker (1983) wasn’t just a book. It was a love letter.

That seems to be her way, she doesn’t just observe, she embeds. Even after her own walls were torn down, she stayed, her lens bridging the past and present. Kids on bikes, pensioners on doorsteps, moments of quiet defiance and everyday warmth. That work is now etched in the UNESCO UK Memory of the World Register, alongside Amber’s films, recognised as “outstanding national value” for its raw, unflinching take on working-class life. Then came Step by Step (1989), a tender look at North Shields dance schools, young girls twirling, proud mums watching, that later nudged Billy Elliot into existence.

I’ve walked Northeast beaches so similar to what she photographed in Writing in the Sand (2001), Tynemouth, Whitley Bay, where her images of sand, sea, and Geordie joy pull me straight back to my ‘80s Aberdeen days, salt in my hair, chasing gulls. Konttinen finds the magic in the everyday, the beauty in what most people walk past, and that’s what makes her work stick.

Her reach stretches far beyond the Northeast, though. In 1980, she was the first photographer since China’s Cultural Revolution to exhibit there via the British Council. Imagine those Byker shots landing in Beijing, a world away from Newcastle’s terraces. Back home, she kept going: Coal Coast (2003) captured post-industrial scars in haunting colour, while Byker Revisited (2009) returned to her old stomping ground, now a patchwork of new faces and stories. Her exhibitions, whether it’s Byker at Side Gallery or Coal Coast at the Baltic, draw you in like the tide. Black-and-white or colour, it doesn’t matter, there’s always something deeply human in her frames.

I’ve raved about Writing in the Sand on my site before, but talking to her only deepened my appreciation. She’s not just clicking a shutter; she’s bottling time. Her 2024 MBE and Royal Photographic Society nods feel like the world finally catching up to what she’s been quietly showing us all along.

Konttinen’s a slow burner, her projects simmering for decades until they become something you can’t ignore. Writing in the Sand spans 20 years, punk lads booting footballs in Whitley Bay, grannies tucking into chips in South Shields, pure Northeast soul. She plays with light and shadow instinctively, capturing a kid mid-leap or carving shapes in the sand with dawn’s glow. It’s storytelling with heart, often paired with words from the people she photographs. Our chat peeled back that patience, she doesn’t force the shot; she waits for it to sing. That’s something I’m still fumbling with, trying to train my own eye to see the extraordinary in the mundane. Konttinen’s work reminds me: live it, feel it, then shoot it.

Her work’s in the Tate, the National Gallery of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, but it’s never been about prestige. It’s about people. Talking to her, I felt that same buzz I got as a shy Aberdeen kid with a camera, photography as a key to lives you’d never otherwise step into. It is because of people like her why I still lug my camera around, chasing those fleeting, quiet moments that make up the bigger picture. Konttinen isn’t just a photographer; she’s a keeper of stories, and I’m chuffed to be sharing hers here. Proof, if ever we needed it, that the quiet ones leave the loudest echoes.

Can you start with how you got into photography at the start and what drew you to this art form over others?

I was born and grew up in Finland. As a child I was inspired by my auntie Oili who lived with my family during the summer months and took photos of our family life. She had an eye for spontaneous moments and every Christmas my brothers and I rushed to her photo album to see what we’d been up to the summer before. Entering these time capsules drew me to the magic of photography.  She let me borrow her twin lens Yashica when I was twelve and by fourteen, I was a member of a camera club in the nearby town, learning to process negatives and to print. Visual storytelling found me early. The journey that had begun then eventually led me to the Amber Film and Photography Collective and the shaping of my life in documentary photography and filmmaking in the North East of England.

What do you believe is the most essential element in creating a powerful photograph, as a newcomer as such myself I am still striving to see things every day that stand out?

A perfect photograph for me has the power to arrest the heart and the mind.  Japanese novelist Jun’ichiro Tanizaki wrote: “The quality that we call beauty, must always grow from the realities of life.” That is the essence of my documentary photography: more of an act of appreciation than of creation. My initial response to what I am about to photograph is often quite visceral and that signals the precise moment when to press the shutter.

Can you describe your overall creative process, from the moment you conceive an idea to the final image?

I am drawn to subjects that are portals to understanding of something and its beauty, that has personal meaning to me and they usually absorb me for years. The longer I immerse myself in the subjects I photograph, the more I am freed from any preconceptions I may have held. Thinking and evaluating the images comes afterwards in the editing and the constructing of a narrative, in staying true to the subject and then telling the story in applicable forms in exhibitions, books, films etc.

As you can see with my review, I love Writing in the Sand but when reading it I wondered with so many images captured over the years, how did you decide which photographs were the right fit for inclusion in the book?

Life on the north eastern beaches didn’t change noticeably over the years I photographed there, so a timeline was not a concern in mixing images. In this book there are sequences of activities, or moods or weather or tidal creations, as in ‘all in a day’.

I have a box of the best images I would like to include. I’d place images on facing pages that won’t clash with each other, whilst also following the narrative from the previous pages to those after. Sometimes you cannot find a place for a favourite picture at all, but then it is good to remember than in a book most commonly ‘less is more’. Best not to cram in every good shot you have. It should remain a story without a beginning and an end, leaving you to want more and to imagine the rest.

Your images exhibit a strong interplay of light and shadow. How do you use these elements to enhance the mood and narrative of your photographs?

B/W photography creates itself with light and shadow. Out of doors, like on the beach, the sandscapes revealed their beauty only briefly in the morning light, ‘sculpted’ into photographs  with the sun and shadows. For the photographs of people I was primarily chasing the action and the framing of the images was more immediate and instinctive, the weather and available light of course playing their part.

How has your approach to photography evolved over the past 25 years, and what key lessons have you learned along the way?

55 years now! I began with what you’d call street photography. During the years I lived and photographed in Byker, from 1969 through the 1970’s I was experimenting with different formats up, to 5×4 to see what each could do that the others didn’t. My approach evolved into ‘negotiated’ photography in my Step by Step project about mothers and daughters at a dancing school. Then, in order to do justice to the legacy of the post-industrial, man-made landscapes in The Coal Coast project I moved to colour. In Byker Revisited I asked the residents of the new Byker Wall Estate: “If you had just one picture to introduce yourself to your neighbours and to the rest of the world, what would you have in it?” Most of my projects have a written part that carries equal weight, stories from the people I photograph.

How has the shift from film to digital (or the integration of both) affected your workflow and creative choices in recent projects?

Working on film made me focus on the ‘decisive moment’, not using extra shots just to cover an event. A further careful selection followed in the darkroom as paper and chemicals were expensive. I still make gelatine silver prints in the darkroom and continue to improve myself in the artistry of printing which I love. Having digitised my negatives I know them now better and know how to tease the best out of them.

Working with digital capture I find myself shooting almost blindly and then the real work begins in the editing afterwards. Either method can serve you well and the subject matter guides the choice. Except I don’t photograph on film any more, too expensive.

What advice would you offer emerging photographers who are eager to explore themes of nature, memory, and impermanence or just choosing a theme for a project?

Simply go for what you want to shout or sing about. Photography will be your passport to worlds you wouldn’t have access to otherwise and your projects will evolve as you get going with them. Learn and be curious.

Are there any other art forms or creative disciplines that influence the way you approach photography or any other photographers whose work inspire you?

I saw hardly any world class documentary photography till I was in the UK. One, amongst others, with whom I have discovered an affinity, Graciela Iturbide, remains an inspiration with her powerful and complex work in Mexico in the matriarchal society of the Zapotecs. Her eye sees meanings beyond the apparent.

What are the plans for the rest of 2025 and onwards in photography for you?

I have the mountainous task of archiving and digitizing my negatives of 50 years, made palatable with the discovery of previously overlooked stories which I am reworking into books.

My photography projects have a tendency to flow on into written words and films, fulfilling the need for more complex narratives. Peter Roberts and I have made six films that began with my photographic projects. The most recent, Still Here, has four stories with people I photographed in the 1970’s and 1980’s, who have recently got in touch. Girl on a Spacehopper is one of them. My past keeps catching up with me.

I have also embarked on a collaborative project with another photographer, on expressions of female friendship.

Is documentary photography as important now as when you started?

It is the essential me.

Please check out her work at – www.amber-online.com and for printsales: L.Parker Stephenson Photographs, NY thank you.

Regards

Alex