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Isabella Jedrzejczyk (Photographer)
Original Side Gallery exhibition text, 1983:
It is part of Side Gallery’s stated policy to collect photographs of life and landscape in the North-East. This exhibition of landscape photographs of Northumberland was commissioned by Side Gallery in 1981.
The photographs were taken on a plate camera with negatives measuring 5 x 4 inches. These were developed in Rodinal. The prints were made on Agfa Record Rapid, developed in PQ Universal and selenium toned. A pale yellow filter was used to record sky detail.
Isabella Jedrzejczyk was born in London in 1953. She studied photography at Trent Polytechnic in Nottingham, and then worked for Derbyshire National Parks before coming to Newcastle to join Side Gallery. She has lived and worked in the region since 1977. During this time she produced a general series of photographs of the North-East, funded by Northern Arts and the Arts Council. North Tyneside Metropolitan Borough Council commissioned a set of Urban Landscapes as part of the North Tyneside survey. Isabella also worked on a series of portraits in a pub in North Shields which formed part of a group show at Side Gallery in 1981, called ‘North Tyneside’. Other work by Isabella Jedrzejczyk includes photographs taken at a Newcastle Coalyard just before its closure in 1981.
Isabella’s photographs of Northumberland sensitively portray the many facets of the Northumbrian landscape - from rugged crags and windswept hills to quiet settlements of cottages and shaded woodlands - with a vivid perception for the often dramatic effects of sunlight and clouds casting light and shadow over the land.
There are many issues embodied in the land, ecological as well as financial. The main point I would like to make is that the landscape is our heritage and our future. We can read the past in it, and if we protect it, it offers us a future. Isabella Jedrzejczyk