£35, Dewi Lewis, hardback, 132 pages, ISBN: 9781916915138
Some projects are born in a flurry of commissions and deadlines. Others, like Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen’s Writing in the Sand, are cultivated over decades – patient, perceptive and profoundly human.
Spanning 25 years, this body of work brings the North East’s beaches to life in all their exuberant, occasionally chaotic, sun-soaked glory. Konttinen, a Finnish-born photographer and founding member of the Amber collective, has long focused her lens on the working-class communities of Newcastle and its surrounds. Here, she moves from the domestic to the tidal, yet retains her signature gift: the ability to witness joy without distorting it.
Her images, printed in sumptuous tritone, capture spontaneous acts of communal theatre – children vaulting off groynes, pensioners paddling with quiet rebellion, teenages congregating…