Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen is a documentary photographer who resides in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, North East England. She is greatly focussed and dedicated to the attention of ordinary people within her social climate and has over the years documented different areas of Newcastle's community. In 1969, she co-founded the film and photography collection Amber whose archives are rooted in social documentary, built around long term engagements with working class and marginalized communities in the North of England.
In 1981 Konttinen began to document a study of working class women, were she explored the dreams and realities of a group of mothers and daughters at a North Shields dancing school. This broader engagement of imagery, photographed between 1981 and 1988 of the mothers and daughters in and outside the dancing school, has given me further inspiration in regards to my photo story of contemporary freestyle dancing.
Konttinen states "Our film Keeping Time, screened on Channel 4 in 1983, began with a straightforward documentary approach to the activities of the Connell-Brown dancing school in North Shields, and ended up as a semi fictional diary of a girl growing up. I stayed on to take photographs: my second attempt at putting a finger on the troublesome, but compelling nucleus of female experience, with both personal and political echoes and implications. I was taken on a seven year journey of discovery by a group of mothers and daughters, whose lives I documented in and out of the dancing school. In 1985 we mounted the mammoth exhibition Step by Step in our gallery, and from there on it lumbered round the country. I took the material back and forth to the dancing school, changing it, scrapping it, re-shooting it, whilst listening to the experiences and comments of the mothers and daughters - and finally had the courage to shape it into a book. I hope it will continue to serve as a springboard for both critical and sympathetic examination of woman's lives within our society, and offer insight into our own dreams as well as each others"
Below are some of the images which I find inspiring and that I feel would relate more so to my photo story, some are accompanied with the text taken from the book Step by Step by Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, published in 1989 by Bloodaxe Books and Amber/Slide
Emma, 1982
Dance display at Terminus Club North Shields, 1981
"She looks frightened there poor little devil!
I'm sure I used to be the more nervous . . . . but what I remember best is being so proud of her! Didn't matter that she couldn't dance - it was just seeing her there, you know what I mean . . . ."
Dance display at Terminus Club 1982
Presentation of certificates at Connell-Brown Dancing School, 1981
Lucrezia, 1982
MUM: Lucrezia's started modelling class!
LUCREZIA: I didn't want to go. It's dead boring . . .
MUM: They had to carry her onto the catwalk the first time! But it does them good, it gives them confidence!
Ella used to drag her feet, and look at her now! She looks like a model, she walks like a model, she walks with her head tall! You got good remarks . . . . What did Miss Brown say?
LUCREZIA: She said I was being meself, and that's all we can expect from the first time!
Connell-Brown Dancing School, 1986
She intended the study as an attempt at putting a finger on the troublesome nucleus of female experience, hoping it would act as a springboard for both critical and sympathetic examination of women’s lives within our society. The resulting photographs interspersed with excerpts from conversations offers an unusual, intimate and engaging insight into the life of a working-class community.
The realities of unemployment, poverty, divorce, hard work, are interwoven with the fun and excitement of the dancing school: run-down terraces and tower blocks are juxtaposed with tutus. Various themes develop from the words and pictures: the importance of home and family, the hard-headed yet often humorous resilience with which difficulties are faced, the importance of the school as a female community, the women’s robust combination of romanticism and pragmatism.
http://www.amber-online.com/exhibitions/step-by-step
No comments:
Post a Comment