Side Gallery brings together two of John Davies's bodies of work exploring British cities, for the first time.

In 2001, developing Metropoli, his exploration of British cities, John Davies approached Side Gallery about his interest in documenting the public spaces of Newcastle/Gateshead, then in the throes of an ambitious programme of culture-led renewal. The Tyneside photographs came together as a body of work entitled Urban Dreams.

In 2008, Amber/Side’s collaboration with the Lit & Phil and the Mining Institute led to a commission to document the legacy in Newcastle and Gateshead of the 1960s, T Dan Smith era of urban reinvention: City State. Bringing both bodies of work together for the first time, the exhibition opens up on comparisons between two periods of ambitious regeneration, the questions we should be raising in the current economic context and the role of documentary/landscape photography in a critique of public policy.

John Davies is internationally recognised as one of the foremost landscape photographers of our time. Side Gallery first showed his work in 1979 and also commissioned Cumbrian Landscapes (1981), Durham Coalfield (1983), For Druridge (1983, with Isabella Jedrzejczyk) and Signs of Coal (2005).