Under Development: What Happens When Cities Change?

Under Development: What Happens When Cities Change? opens at Newcastle Contemporary Art on 16 October 2026, bringing together more than five decades of documentary photography from Tyneside and East London. Drawing on the AmberSide Collection and Four Corners Archive, the exhibition explores how housing, urban planning, regeneration and political decisions have transformed communities and the places they call home.

At first glance, Newcastle and London’s Tower Hamlets may seem worlds apart. In 2026, however, the two areas have remarkably similar populations, with around 330,000 residents each. Separated by almost 300 miles and shaped by very different regional histories, Tyneside and East London share a number of important experiences: industrial growth, migration, working-class communities, the decline of traditional industries and major waves of urban redevelopment.

Both regions grew around rivers and industry, attracting generations of people who came for work and established vibrant communities. Both experienced the demolition and reconstruction of large areas of working-class housing, followed by the economic and social disruption caused by industrial decline. Later, ambitious regeneration programmes promised to reshape these cities and create new opportunities for the future.

Photography was there to document these transformations as they happened. In 1969, the Amber Film & Photography Collective moved to Tyneside and became closely involved in documenting everyday life and social change in the North East. In 1977, it opened SIDE, a dedicated venue for documentary photography and film on Newcastle’s Quayside. In East London, Four Corners was founded in Bethnal Green in 1973, while the nearby Half Moon Photography Workshop, later known as Camerawork, developed an influential approach to photography, publishing and community-based practice.

These organisations were not simply preserving a record of the past. Their photographers and filmmakers were working within rapidly changing communities, documenting streets and homes as they disappeared or were transformed, while recording the people who lived through these changes. Their work captures communities organising, adapting and challenging decisions about their neighbourhoods at a time when the future of the city was still being debated.

More than fifty years later, many of these questions remain relevant. Britain continues to face a serious housing crisis, while cities across the country are once again considering how to accommodate growing populations, regenerate neighbourhoods and create places that people can afford to call home.

Under Development: What Happens When Cities Change? brings the AmberSide Collection and Four Corners Archive together to examine the human stories behind urban transformation. Through documentary photographs made over more than five decades, the exhibition asks what happens when housing plans become real neighbourhoods — and considers what was changed, what was gained, what was lost, what communities fought to protect, and what happened afterwards.

By placing photographs from Tyneside and East London alongside one another, Under Development offers a compelling visual history of urban change, community and housing, while raising questions that remain central to the future of British cities.

ARTISTS INCLUDE

Amber Films, Bengali Photo Archive, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Mick Catmull, Steve Conlan, John Davies, Dorman Long Collection, T.J. Ermel, Jimmy Forsyth, Martine Franke, Peter Fryer, Richard Grassick, David Hoffman, Graciela Iturbide, Izabela Jedrzejczyk, Chris Killip, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Lambdon Visual Aids, Tom Learmonth, Keith Pattison, Derek Smith, Graham Smith, T. Dan Smith, Paul Trevor.