Step by Step (1982–1989), is a study of girls and their mothers at a dancing school in North Shields, in the North East of England, and their later lives after leaving the school. First published in 1989 and long out of print, this new edition of Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen's classic book has been extensively revised by Sirkka. It will be printed in tritone to ensure the highest quality of the images in comparison to the original book.
Sirkka followed the lives of the dancing daughters and their dancing mothers over a six-year period, seeing how their dreams and their dancing came to sustain them in their tougher personal realities. In Step by Step their urban environments, which accompany their insightful and witty narratives along with their growing awareness of the challenges they face as women, stalk them with their own messages.
The publisher Dewi Lewis is crowdfunding £10,000 to ensure the publication of the book.
Born in Finland, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen came to study filmmaking in London and became a founder member of Amber Film & Photography Collective, based since 1969 in Newcastle upon Tyne in North East England. Sirkka’s seminal documentation of Byker, the close-knit community of Newcastle upon Tyne that was her home for seven years while destined for wholesale redevelopment led to national recognition as a key photographic and filmic account of a rich working class culture on the eve of its destruction. Her other long term projects, developed as exhibitions, books, and/or films, include Step by Step/Keeping Time, Writing in the Sand, My Finnish Roots/Letters to Katja, the Coal Coast/Song For Billy, Byker Revisited/Today I'm With You and Still Here; Byker and The Writing in the Sand winning numerous awards at international film festivals. Already widely exhibited nationally and internationally, in 1980 her Byker exhibition was the first photographic exhibition from the UK to be taken to China by The British Council after the Cultural Revolution. In 2011 Sirkka’s photography and Amber’s films were inscribed in the UNESCO UK Memory of the World Register as being of outstanding national value and importance to the United Kingdom.
Details and background the publication here.
