The Side Gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne is part of the Amber Film & Photography Collective. This collective was founded in 1969 and concerns itself with the documentation of the working class in north-eastern England, by means of film, video and photography. Amber prefers to work through long-term, large scale projects, such as the Durham Coalfield Project which began in 2000, in which the radical social changes resulting from the mine closures in the region will be visualised.

The Side Gallery was established in 1977 and shows the work of local, British and international social documentary photographers. In the course of the years the Gallery has built up a collection of over 7000 photographs. One of the photographers in this collection is the American press photographer-cum-urban drifter Arthur Fellig (1889-1968), better known under his photographic pseudonym Weegee. Between 1930 and 1950 he photographed New York City by night, on the streets and in bars, at police stations and in cinemas. Thanks to the police radio in his car, he was often the first to arrive at the scene of a traffic accident or shooting. In part through his direct manner of photographing Weegee developed into the chronicler of the social life of The Big Apple. The exhibition offers a survey of his world-famous oeuvre.

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