INTERVIEW: Hazel Plater | NARC. | Reliably Inshaped

Image: Hazel Plater by Sasha Mallo Tardiveau

In her long-form documentary challenge The Geordie Riviera, North East photographer Hazel Plater captures the rhythms of every day life alongside the North Tyneside shoreline via exploratory pictures from North Shields, Tynemouth, Cullercoats and Whitley Bay, celebrating seaside society and its underappreciated magnificence.

“It’s the coast I grew up with,” Hazel shares, reflecting on what drew her to doc the world in such depth. “After my Mam passed away in 2021, I sorted out things and found family ‘bucket and spade’ photographs, taken at King Edward’s Bay, Tynemouth when I was little. And now, I’m documenting other people’s experiences of this stretch of coastline.”

Influenced by each iconic and lesser-known names in pictures, Hazel factors to artists whose visible storytelling helped form her personal instincts. “Martin Parr is just so much fun! I can’t say that my work is anywhere near his understanding of British culture, though. Helen Levitt really inspires my street photography – how she used shape and form to show the relationship between people and their environment. Alberto Schommer’s book Azul has this whole blue/white/gold sun-kissed vibe… I’ve tried to do that here too.”

Now firmly targeted on folks and neighborhood, Hazel’s pictures model has matured alongside a need to let the pictures converse merely. “The majority of my photographs don’t have very much editing at all,” she notes. “Maybe it’s unusual in these ‘social media polishing’ times.”

Her photographs speak louder when capturing occasions like Whitley Bay Carnival and the Cullercoats Festival: “It’s interesting how different people gather together to do different things there. I do especially like an event where I can include a lot of people in a single frame.”

It’s not simply the plain bits that may be seen as fairly. I really actually love the shapes and peeling paint of the decommissioned paddling swimming pools and the areas of rocky shoreline now we have

And when requested if there’s any picture from the exhibition that holds explicit significance, Hazel picks a candid picture of roofers taking a break on a bench going through the ocean. “To me, this bench image represents all the non-holidaymakers who enjoy this stretch of coastline as part of their regular day.”

Her inventive course of is predicated on intuition however is then formed right into a narrative. “I’ve been shooting a lot of the urban landscape photographs on 35mm film, so I don’t see those results as quickly as the digital ones. But then I make small prints from both and look at them together until they form a cohesive story.”

From collaborating with artist Conrad Milne on his upcoming Through Shields set up to persevering with her personal photographic wanderings, Hazel is energised by future prospects. “I’d be interested in talking to anyone that has ideas of how I might expand upon and present this project in other ways too.”

In no matter approach Hazel presents this challenge, it can proceed to peel again the distorting veneer of Instagram-edited photographs we’re bombarded with and reveal the true great thing about the Tyneside coast. When requested what she hoped folks would take away from The Geordie Riviera, she responds: “That it’s not just St Mary’s Lighthouse! It’s not just the obvious bits that can be seen as pretty. I actually really love the shapes and peeling paint of the decommissioned paddling pools and the areas of rocky shoreline we have, once you get away from the more touristy spots.”

The Geordie Riviera is exhibited at North Shields Library (2nd–thirty first July), Battle Hill Library (4th August–twenty fifth September, together with meet-the-photographer occasion on seventh August) and Newcastle’s Civic Centre Arches Gallery (twenty ninth September–tenth October).