Peter Fryer and David Campbell will deliver the next NEPN talk on March 31st from 7pm at the Mining Institute.
“When Ali Said opened his South Shields boarding house for Arab seamen in August 1909, he connected the northeast of England to colonial networks that ran from Europe through Suez to India and beyond. Over time these lodgings in the Holborn district of the town marked a transformation in the character of the region. Although the boarding houses are nearing the end of their life, the Yemeni community continues to be an integral part of South Shields and northeast England.
Peter has been photographing the Yemeni community in South Shields for the past ten years. The photographs in this video have been exhibited at the Side Gallery in Newcastle, The Customs House in South Shields, and The Hyal Sayeed Foundation in Taiz, Yemen.
David wrote the exhibition text for Peter’s show detailing the background to the boarding houses in South Shields. In October 2008, Peter and David began the process of producing a multimedia piece built around Peter’s still photographs. It was completed in January 2009 and shown at Chobi Mela V (the International Festival of Photography in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on 30 January 2009), and was at the South Shields Museum between 7 February and 26 April 2009 as part of Peter’s latest show.
The Boarding House was licensed to Saudi Aramco World in November 2009, where it appears on-line as part of a larger article and gallery of photographs about the Yemeni community in South Shields.”
Dr David Campbell is a photography consultant, writer and award-winning multimedia producer, and member of the Durham Centre for Advanced Photography Studies at Durham University. With both academic and practice-based credentials in photography, multimedia and politics, he brings an understanding of the contexts that shape visual storytelling to the analysis and production of new work. The author/editor of six books and some 50 academic articles and essays, David’s research concentrates on how atrocity, famine, war and ‘Africa’ are represented. Through his blog at www.david-campbell.org David writes regularly on issues in contemporary photojournalism and documentary photography.
Peter Fryer is a freelance documentary photographer, living in the north east of England. Peter has been a documentary photographer for 30 years producing work for exhibition, publication and editorial uses nationally and internationally.
His work looks at people and community, and over the last 25 years has concentrated on two distinct areas: The north east of England and The Middle East where he has worked extensively with Palestinians in Lebanon and Palestine. Over the last 10 years He has worked in Yemen and the north east of England on a publication and web site, ‘The Boarding House’, relating to the Yemeni community in South Shields, the north of England and its links with Yemen. His work in these areas looks at Arab identity and representation.
He has had a close working relationship with The Side Gallery and Amber Films Newcastle upon Tyne for over the last 25 years. He has lectured and exhibited in UK, Germany, USA, Bangladesh, Palestine and Yemen and is an Associate Lecturer in Documentary Photography at the University of Sunderland in the Department of Photography, Video & Digital Imaging.