2 | Caption, date
To my Mother Jenny A lively critic and an inspiration
2 | Caption, date
To my Mother Jenny A lively critic and an inspiration
Caption, date2011 Hotel, 4 4 | Ocean
Caption, date |
5
Caption, date2011 Hotel, 4 4 | Ocean
Caption, date |
5
Anna Fox 6 | Caption, date
Resort 1 Butlin’s Bognor Regis
Caption, date |
7
Anna Fox 6 | Caption, date
Resort 1 Butlin’s Bognor Regis
Caption, date |
7
8 | Caption, date
Dance studio, 2011 |
9
8 | Caption, date
Dance studio, 2011 |
9
Halfway to Paradise David Chandler
David Chandler is a writer, curator and editor. He was
South Pacific
was nearing the end of an incredible four-year run at the
Assistant Curator of Photography at the National Portrait
It was in the late summer of 1962 that a mirage-like, almost
Dominion, which began with the film’s British release on 21
Gallery, London (1982-1989); Head of Exhibitions at The
mystical vision of the ultimate holiday – a strange and
April 1958. Since then it had become a feature of London’s
Photographers’ Gallery, London (1991-1995); Projects
confusing blend of exotic locations, cultural difference, cross-
West End entertainment scene, a visitor attraction as it would
Manager at the Institute of International Visual Arts (inIVA)
dressing and war – first captured my imagination. It had been
now be called, and my parents – never exactly trailblazers
(1995-1997); and, from 1997 to 2010, Director of Photoworks,
an indifferent season, mostly cold and wet; the duffle coats
across the cultural landscape – were no doubt late to hear
Brighton. He has written widely on photography and the
in July, and abortive, rain-soaked trips to the park, all minor
of its popularity and determined to catch the experience
visual arts for many books and journals and is currently
prefigurings, as it turned out, of the most severe winter since
(it was talked about in that way) before it finally closed on
Professor of Photography at the University of Plymouth.
1739, which arrived on Boxing Day and locked some areas of
30 September. And, maybe as a consolation for the absent
the country into a relentless snow-freeze for ten weeks until
holiday, our fifteen-mile trip into London was also planned
the beginning of March. And for us that summer, there was
as a present for my seventh birthday, the promise of the
no holiday on the horizon, no week-long visit to the south
glorious spectacle I’m sure outweighing any uncertainty
coast – Bognor, Swanage or Camber Sands; or to Ilfracombe
about the film’s relevance for a seven-year-old child. South
in Devon, where the occasional holiday, I now realise, was a
Pacific is certainly the first film I remember seeing at the
sign of some temporary uplift in our fortunes. No, that year my
cinema, and it set high expectations for the future. Of all the
parents had sacrificed our holiday plans to pay the deposit on
film’s distinctive elements – the Rodgers and Hammerstein
our first car, a bright red Austin Mini that shone in our street as
songs, the parade of ensemble scenes that betrayed the
if finally heralding for us the end of post-war austerity, an acid
film’s origins as a Broadway stage production of 1949, or the
flash of colour in a sea of grey and brown.
sweeping intersections of space across its 128 degree field of vision – by far the most startling, the most mesmerizingly
But the holiday atmosphere was to dawn after all, not at the
Baroque, was South Pacific’s unprecedented and radiantly
end of the A23, but on a giant screen in the Dominion Theatre,
eccentric use of colour1. But even at that tender age, its more
Tottenham Court Road, specially built to accommodate the
profound affect was to leave me with a hazy but nevertheless
grand ambitions and epic proportions of the first 70mm
enduring impression of what fun, excitement, and love in a
panoramic film to be screened in Britain – the Hollywood
dream-like place away from home might look like; for me it
musical South Pacific. In fact at that time South Pacific
became a kind of perfect, idealised image of leisure.
|
11
Halfway to Paradise David Chandler
David Chandler is a writer, curator and editor. He was
South Pacific
was nearing the end of an incredible four-year run at the
Assistant Curator of Photography at the National Portrait
It was in the late summer of 1962 that a mirage-like, almost
Dominion, which began with the film’s British release on 21
Gallery, London (1982-1989); Head of Exhibitions at The
mystical vision of the ultimate holiday – a strange and
April 1958. Since then it had become a feature of London’s
Photographers’ Gallery, London (1991-1995); Projects
confusing blend of exotic locations, cultural difference, cross-
West End entertainment scene, a visitor attraction as it would
Manager at the Institute of International Visual Arts (inIVA)
dressing and war – first captured my imagination. It had been
now be called, and my parents – never exactly trailblazers
(1995-1997); and, from 1997 to 2010, Director of Photoworks,
an indifferent season, mostly cold and wet; the duffle coats
across the cultural landscape – were no doubt late to hear
Brighton. He has written widely on photography and the
in July, and abortive, rain-soaked trips to the park, all minor
of its popularity and determined to catch the experience
visual arts for many books and journals and is currently
prefigurings, as it turned out, of the most severe winter since
(it was talked about in that way) before it finally closed on
Professor of Photography at the University of Plymouth.
1739, which arrived on Boxing Day and locked some areas of
30 September. And, maybe as a consolation for the absent
the country into a relentless snow-freeze for ten weeks until
holiday, our fifteen-mile trip into London was also planned
the beginning of March. And for us that summer, there was
as a present for my seventh birthday, the promise of the
no holiday on the horizon, no week-long visit to the south
glorious spectacle I’m sure outweighing any uncertainty
coast – Bognor, Swanage or Camber Sands; or to Ilfracombe
about the film’s relevance for a seven-year-old child. South
in Devon, where the occasional holiday, I now realise, was a
Pacific is certainly the first film I remember seeing at the
sign of some temporary uplift in our fortunes. No, that year my
cinema, and it set high expectations for the future. Of all the
parents had sacrificed our holiday plans to pay the deposit on
film’s distinctive elements – the Rodgers and Hammerstein
our first car, a bright red Austin Mini that shone in our street as
songs, the parade of ensemble scenes that betrayed the
if finally heralding for us the end of post-war austerity, an acid
film’s origins as a Broadway stage production of 1949, or the
flash of colour in a sea of grey and brown.
sweeping intersections of space across its 128 degree field of vision – by far the most startling, the most mesmerizingly
But the holiday atmosphere was to dawn after all, not at the
Baroque, was South Pacific’s unprecedented and radiantly
end of the A23, but on a giant screen in the Dominion Theatre,
eccentric use of colour1. But even at that tender age, its more
Tottenham Court Road, specially built to accommodate the
profound affect was to leave me with a hazy but nevertheless
grand ambitions and epic proportions of the first 70mm
enduring impression of what fun, excitement, and love in a
panoramic film to be screened in Britain – the Hollywood
dream-like place away from home might look like; for me it
musical South Pacific. In fact at that time South Pacific
became a kind of perfect, idealised image of leisure.
|
11
Set on an unspecified US Navy base in the southern seas
camp was an important representative symbol in the general
But in place of Coleridge’s ‘sacred river’ running through
1000 people in 600 chalets with electricity and running
during World War II, South Pacific revolves around two central
spectre of Americanisation. In their writings, as Dick Hebdige
‘measureless caverns’ and ‘gardens bright with sinuous rills’,
water, dining and recreation halls, a theatre, a gymnasium, a
love stories, which, in linking the community of billeted sailors
once pointed out in his seminal essay of 1981, ‘Towards a
Orwell imagined those caverns now air-conditioned, their
rhododendron-bordered swimming pool with cascades either
and the native population, tentatively broach the subject of
Cartography of Taste 1935-1962’, both Hoggart and Orwell use
original rocky interiors ‘buried under layers of tastefully-
end and a boating lake. In the landscaped grounds there were
American racism. The political subtext of the film’s resolving
the image of the holiday camp as a social paradigm for working
coloured plastics’, and ‘turned into a series of tea-grottoes
to be tennis courts, bowling- and putting greens and cricket
of these racial tensions is that it cements and celebrates a
class life after World War II. It was a vision of how ‘authentic’
in the Moorish, Caucasian or Hawaiian styles’ . For Orwell
pitches’10. Ironically it was a plan for highly organised mass
form of cultural embrace between the USA and its most recent
and ‘vigorous’ pre-war communities were being irrevocably
this sham paradise was the sign of a world increasingly de-
leisure closely allied to the structures of work.
addition to the Union, Hawaii, which finally became the 50th
altered and contaminated in various ways by what Hoggart
sensitized to and removed from the simple pleasures and
State in 1959. In fact South Pacific can be seen as one the first
famously characterised as the ‘shiny barbarism’, the ‘ceaseless
awe-inspiring potential of nature. The artificial, over-regulated
During the inter-war period the growth and success of holiday
3
7
manifestations of a kind of ‘south-seas Americana’, a new
exploitation of a hollow brightness’ embodied by American
environments – where one is never alone and never free from
camps was closely bound up with the gradual increase in the
inflection in the language of American popular culture then
mass culture and consumerism, which, despite its classless
the sound of piped music – were designed, he felt, to suppress
availability of paid holidays. After a long period of debate and
increasingly affecting – and for many, corrupting – tastes and
tone, was seen to represent an erosion of individual personality
curiosity, and to ‘prevent the onset of that dreaded thing,
lobbying from unions, government legislation in the form of
patterns of consumption in post-war Britain. It is significant, at
and choice.
thought.’ These characteristics, he conceded, were ‘modern
the ‘Holidays with Pay Act’ was finally introduced in 193811.
civilised man’s idea of pleasure’, but for him they represented
Butlin’s recognised the implications of this development and
least to the context of this essay and publication, that the film’s
8
cross-cultural narrative, and its influence, was born out of a
In his essay, ‘Pleasure Spots’, written for ‘The Tribune’ in
‘an effort to destroy consciousness’ . He said: ‘Man needs
sought to make an explicit connection between their camps
‘holiday-camp’ atmosphere of group recreation, characterised
January 1946, Orwell elaborates in some detail about what
warmth, society, leisure, comfort and security: he also needs
and the new opportunities with their promotional slogan:
in the film’s promotional material as one involving ‘humour, 2
9
solitude, creative work and the sense of wonder.’
this dreaded holiday camp culture of the future might look
‘Holidays with pay. Holidays with play. A week’s holiday for a week’s wage’12. Not only did this suggest that their holidays
gusto, irony, horseplay and conviviality’ . The displaced
like. He refers specifically to a ‘shiny magazine’ article written
American military community of the film, motivated by pre-
by a journalist just returned from Honolulu who recalled a
At the time of writing ‘Pleasure Spots’, Orwell was also
could be seen as a form of fair exchange rather than the
action boredom into that convivial ‘horseplay’, is, like the
conversation there with a pilot who lamented the fact that,
assembling the ideas for a new novel, tentatively entitled ‘The
burden of additional expenditure but also, and perhaps more
‘with all the inventiveness of war…someone hadn’t found out
Last Man in Europe’, and eventually published as 1984 in June
subtly, that Butlin’s camps could offer the routine of work – a
values and constraints might be temporarily forgotten or
how a tired and life-hungry man could relax, rest, play poker,
1949. From the summer of 1946, following the death of his
form of leisure similarly free from thinking and the onerous
transformed.
drink and make love, all at once, and round the clock, and come
wife Ellen a year before, Orwell began writing the new book
organising of time – but with relaxation and pleasure replacing
out of it feeling good and fresh and ready for the job again’ .
in a farmhouse on the remote Scottish island of Jura owned
the hardships of labour. Orwell’s ideas on the suppression of
As they filtered into the collective imagination of Britain c.1958
But the journalist discovered that such a place was already
by his friend, the Observer editor David Astor. Here, although
thought notwithstanding, for many people experiencing paid
to 1962, such exotic fantasies played not only into the tastes
being planned in Britain, by an entrepreneur with a blueprint
struggling with ill health and the onset of TB, he experienced a
holidays for the first time, there were simple benefits to be
and aspirations of vast popular audiences but also into the
for a futuristic pleasure resort that was described as: ‘a space
sense of isolation and raw proximity to nature so antithetical to
gained from this convenient alternative to the working week,
ideas and plans of those that catered for them, the holiday
covering several acres, under a series of sliding roofs – for
the encroaching synthetic worlds of ‘Pleasure Spots’. Written in
benefits that suggest a real human dimension absent from
entrepreneurs, who sought to transpose that exoticism, and
the British weather is unreliable…with an immense dance
a wild windswept place as the political map of the world was
Orwell and Hoggart’s more abstracted images of the camps as
some of those ideals of conviviality and personal freedom,
floor made of translucent plastic which can be illuminated
transforming in the desolate aftermath of World War Two, 1984
signs of terminal decline in working class life. It is clear that
into real experiences. And that, to an extent, characterises
from beneath. Around it are grouped other functional spaces,
took the critical ideas stirred in part by the conditions of the new
these simple benefits could be liberating in ways that reflect
the doomed project of British holiday camps during the
at different levels…balcony bars and restaurants…a battery
pleasure resorts much further. The regimentation of personal
back on the nature of lives already highly institutionalised by
sixties, seventies and eighties as they tried to accommodate
of skittle alleys. Two blue lagoons: one, periodically agitated
freedom and expression that Orwell saw in the holiday camps
work and dominated by everyday pressures and compromises:
the increasingly extravagant dreams of their clientele;
by waves, for strong swimmers, and another, a smooth and
of the future, their insidious control of the mind as well as the
for example, as historians Colin Ward and Dennis Hardy have
12 | liminal space of the holiday, one in which established social
4
5
recreating the vague outlines of other, potentially richer
summery pool, for playtime bathers’ . In this still imaginary
body, helped form the embryonic atmospheres of an entire
pointed out, at a time ‘when so many families were obliged
cultural experiences and the shimmering, ephemeral celluloid
place there would also be ‘music seeping through hundreds of
social order that emerged fully elaborated in 1984 as the state of
to live with their in-laws…a chalet at Butlin’s was for many
excitement of Hollywood, within the degraded material fabric
grills connected with a central distributing stage, where dance
Oceania overseen by Big Brother and the Thought Police.
couples their first experience of domestic privacy’13. And it is
of fading seaside towns: turning the mysterious hallucinatory
or symphonic orchestras play or the radio programme can be
grace of South Pacific into the Beachcomber Bar at Butlin’s,
caught, amplified and disseminated.’ And, at the thousand-car
Work, Rest and Play
by members of the intellectual left as the sad and inevitable
Bognor Regis.
drive-in cinema, ‘uniformed male attendants check the cars’,
It is hard, however, to project Orwell’s dark dystopian
compliancy of people to the camp’s institutional regimes was
while ‘girls in white satin slacks take orders for buffet dishes
imaginings or the templates of hyper-reality onto the ebullient
in fact more complex. Many people, for example, preferred
figure of Billy Butlin, who by 1946 may have been the model
the camp’s ‘impersonal service of large-scale catering, or
for the holiday entrepreneur of ‘Pleasure Spots’. Ten years
self-service in a cafeteria system, to the role-playing exercise
Pleasure Spots
6
and drinks, and bring them on trays’ .
Such ‘everywhere and nowhere’ environments had been
also interesting to note that what might have been perceived
attracting the cautionary attention of a number of prominent
Orwell saw this entrepreneur’s dream as a kind of debased
before that article was published, Butlin had already envisioned
involved in being waited on’14. In this we might detect the class-
commentators since the 1940s. For English writers such as
version of the ‘pleasure-dome’ that Coleridge had once
a grand scale for his first holiday camp at Skegness on the
inflected distaste for another kind of artificiality altogether –
Richard Hoggart and George Orwell, for example, the holiday
envisioned in Kubla Khan’s summer palace of Xanadu.
Lincolnshire coast: ‘My plans were for a site to accommodate
‘the matter of putting on an act’15.
|
13
Set on an unspecified US Navy base in the southern seas
camp was an important representative symbol in the general
But in place of Coleridge’s ‘sacred river’ running through
1000 people in 600 chalets with electricity and running
during World War II, South Pacific revolves around two central
spectre of Americanisation. In their writings, as Dick Hebdige
‘measureless caverns’ and ‘gardens bright with sinuous rills’,
water, dining and recreation halls, a theatre, a gymnasium, a
love stories, which, in linking the community of billeted sailors
once pointed out in his seminal essay of 1981, ‘Towards a
Orwell imagined those caverns now air-conditioned, their
rhododendron-bordered swimming pool with cascades either
and the native population, tentatively broach the subject of
Cartography of Taste 1935-1962’, both Hoggart and Orwell use
original rocky interiors ‘buried under layers of tastefully-
end and a boating lake. In the landscaped grounds there were
American racism. The political subtext of the film’s resolving
the image of the holiday camp as a social paradigm for working
coloured plastics’, and ‘turned into a series of tea-grottoes
to be tennis courts, bowling- and putting greens and cricket
of these racial tensions is that it cements and celebrates a
class life after World War II. It was a vision of how ‘authentic’
in the Moorish, Caucasian or Hawaiian styles’ . For Orwell
pitches’10. Ironically it was a plan for highly organised mass
form of cultural embrace between the USA and its most recent
and ‘vigorous’ pre-war communities were being irrevocably
this sham paradise was the sign of a world increasingly de-
leisure closely allied to the structures of work.
addition to the Union, Hawaii, which finally became the 50th
altered and contaminated in various ways by what Hoggart
sensitized to and removed from the simple pleasures and
State in 1959. In fact South Pacific can be seen as one the first
famously characterised as the ‘shiny barbarism’, the ‘ceaseless
awe-inspiring potential of nature. The artificial, over-regulated
During the inter-war period the growth and success of holiday
3
7
manifestations of a kind of ‘south-seas Americana’, a new
exploitation of a hollow brightness’ embodied by American
environments – where one is never alone and never free from
camps was closely bound up with the gradual increase in the
inflection in the language of American popular culture then
mass culture and consumerism, which, despite its classless
the sound of piped music – were designed, he felt, to suppress
availability of paid holidays. After a long period of debate and
increasingly affecting – and for many, corrupting – tastes and
tone, was seen to represent an erosion of individual personality
curiosity, and to ‘prevent the onset of that dreaded thing,
lobbying from unions, government legislation in the form of
patterns of consumption in post-war Britain. It is significant, at
and choice.
thought.’ These characteristics, he conceded, were ‘modern
the ‘Holidays with Pay Act’ was finally introduced in 193811.
civilised man’s idea of pleasure’, but for him they represented
Butlin’s recognised the implications of this development and
least to the context of this essay and publication, that the film’s
8
cross-cultural narrative, and its influence, was born out of a
In his essay, ‘Pleasure Spots’, written for ‘The Tribune’ in
‘an effort to destroy consciousness’ . He said: ‘Man needs
sought to make an explicit connection between their camps
‘holiday-camp’ atmosphere of group recreation, characterised
January 1946, Orwell elaborates in some detail about what
warmth, society, leisure, comfort and security: he also needs
and the new opportunities with their promotional slogan:
in the film’s promotional material as one involving ‘humour, 2
9
solitude, creative work and the sense of wonder.’
this dreaded holiday camp culture of the future might look
‘Holidays with pay. Holidays with play. A week’s holiday for a week’s wage’12. Not only did this suggest that their holidays
gusto, irony, horseplay and conviviality’ . The displaced
like. He refers specifically to a ‘shiny magazine’ article written
American military community of the film, motivated by pre-
by a journalist just returned from Honolulu who recalled a
At the time of writing ‘Pleasure Spots’, Orwell was also
could be seen as a form of fair exchange rather than the
action boredom into that convivial ‘horseplay’, is, like the
conversation there with a pilot who lamented the fact that,
assembling the ideas for a new novel, tentatively entitled ‘The
burden of additional expenditure but also, and perhaps more
‘with all the inventiveness of war…someone hadn’t found out
Last Man in Europe’, and eventually published as 1984 in June
subtly, that Butlin’s camps could offer the routine of work – a
values and constraints might be temporarily forgotten or
how a tired and life-hungry man could relax, rest, play poker,
1949. From the summer of 1946, following the death of his
form of leisure similarly free from thinking and the onerous
transformed.
drink and make love, all at once, and round the clock, and come
wife Ellen a year before, Orwell began writing the new book
organising of time – but with relaxation and pleasure replacing
out of it feeling good and fresh and ready for the job again’ .
in a farmhouse on the remote Scottish island of Jura owned
the hardships of labour. Orwell’s ideas on the suppression of
As they filtered into the collective imagination of Britain c.1958
But the journalist discovered that such a place was already
by his friend, the Observer editor David Astor. Here, although
thought notwithstanding, for many people experiencing paid
to 1962, such exotic fantasies played not only into the tastes
being planned in Britain, by an entrepreneur with a blueprint
struggling with ill health and the onset of TB, he experienced a
holidays for the first time, there were simple benefits to be
and aspirations of vast popular audiences but also into the
for a futuristic pleasure resort that was described as: ‘a space
sense of isolation and raw proximity to nature so antithetical to
gained from this convenient alternative to the working week,
ideas and plans of those that catered for them, the holiday
covering several acres, under a series of sliding roofs – for
the encroaching synthetic worlds of ‘Pleasure Spots’. Written in
benefits that suggest a real human dimension absent from
entrepreneurs, who sought to transpose that exoticism, and
the British weather is unreliable…with an immense dance
a wild windswept place as the political map of the world was
Orwell and Hoggart’s more abstracted images of the camps as
some of those ideals of conviviality and personal freedom,
floor made of translucent plastic which can be illuminated
transforming in the desolate aftermath of World War Two, 1984
signs of terminal decline in working class life. It is clear that
into real experiences. And that, to an extent, characterises
from beneath. Around it are grouped other functional spaces,
took the critical ideas stirred in part by the conditions of the new
these simple benefits could be liberating in ways that reflect
the doomed project of British holiday camps during the
at different levels…balcony bars and restaurants…a battery
pleasure resorts much further. The regimentation of personal
back on the nature of lives already highly institutionalised by
sixties, seventies and eighties as they tried to accommodate
of skittle alleys. Two blue lagoons: one, periodically agitated
freedom and expression that Orwell saw in the holiday camps
work and dominated by everyday pressures and compromises:
the increasingly extravagant dreams of their clientele;
by waves, for strong swimmers, and another, a smooth and
of the future, their insidious control of the mind as well as the
for example, as historians Colin Ward and Dennis Hardy have
12 | liminal space of the holiday, one in which established social
4
5
recreating the vague outlines of other, potentially richer
summery pool, for playtime bathers’ . In this still imaginary
body, helped form the embryonic atmospheres of an entire
pointed out, at a time ‘when so many families were obliged
cultural experiences and the shimmering, ephemeral celluloid
place there would also be ‘music seeping through hundreds of
social order that emerged fully elaborated in 1984 as the state of
to live with their in-laws…a chalet at Butlin’s was for many
excitement of Hollywood, within the degraded material fabric
grills connected with a central distributing stage, where dance
Oceania overseen by Big Brother and the Thought Police.
couples their first experience of domestic privacy’13. And it is
of fading seaside towns: turning the mysterious hallucinatory
or symphonic orchestras play or the radio programme can be
grace of South Pacific into the Beachcomber Bar at Butlin’s,
caught, amplified and disseminated.’ And, at the thousand-car
Work, Rest and Play
by members of the intellectual left as the sad and inevitable
Bognor Regis.
drive-in cinema, ‘uniformed male attendants check the cars’,
It is hard, however, to project Orwell’s dark dystopian
compliancy of people to the camp’s institutional regimes was
while ‘girls in white satin slacks take orders for buffet dishes
imaginings or the templates of hyper-reality onto the ebullient
in fact more complex. Many people, for example, preferred
figure of Billy Butlin, who by 1946 may have been the model
the camp’s ‘impersonal service of large-scale catering, or
for the holiday entrepreneur of ‘Pleasure Spots’. Ten years
self-service in a cafeteria system, to the role-playing exercise
Pleasure Spots
6
and drinks, and bring them on trays’ .
Such ‘everywhere and nowhere’ environments had been
also interesting to note that what might have been perceived
attracting the cautionary attention of a number of prominent
Orwell saw this entrepreneur’s dream as a kind of debased
before that article was published, Butlin had already envisioned
involved in being waited on’14. In this we might detect the class-
commentators since the 1940s. For English writers such as
version of the ‘pleasure-dome’ that Coleridge had once
a grand scale for his first holiday camp at Skegness on the
inflected distaste for another kind of artificiality altogether –
Richard Hoggart and George Orwell, for example, the holiday
envisioned in Kubla Khan’s summer palace of Xanadu.
Lincolnshire coast: ‘My plans were for a site to accommodate
‘the matter of putting on an act’15.
|
13
14 |
The John Hinde Studio
sensibility and subject was more complex, and the results
theatre group on a low budget and a tight schedule, and that
Hinde Revisited
The tensions between naturalism and artificiality, between
were far more extravagant.
an air of barely suppressed boredom lingers in almost all the
These notes of discord in the theatrical encounter between
pictures, only adds to their surreal quality and kitsch value for
Hinde’s style of photography and Butlin’s style of holiday
later, more sophisticated photographic audiences.
entertainment were important to the rediscovery and
relaxation and uncertain role playing, are at the heart of one of the most enduring visual records of Butlin’s holiday
In many ways the pictures that Hinde’s staff photographers,
camps in the 1960s, 70s and 80s: the photographs of John
Elmar Ludwig, Edmund Nägele and David Noble, produced
Hinde’s studio. ‘Johnny’ Hinde shared with Billy Butlin a
at Butlin’s from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s represent
But it is also the faces and expressions that stare back
attraction for Martin Parr, who largely oversaw that process.
background in travelling entertainments. In the late forties,
a meeting of minds. Both Hinde and Billy Butlin were
from Hinde’s photographs, the people who look at the
While a student at Manchester Polytechnic, Parr had spent
already recognised as an accomplished colour photographer,
interested in the fabrication of illusions, both traded on
photographer, and so at us across the decades that have
the summers of 1971 and 72 working as a staff photographer
he was commissioned by George Harrap’s publishing
the mass appeal and commercial potential of the dream-
passed, who add some deeper resonance to the images
at Butlin’s in Filey, and having been impressed by Hinde’s
company to produce photographs for a series of books
like sensation, and the concomitant willingness to suspend
and are part of their lasting value. We see them staring from
images began collecting his postcards from that point. But,
entitled ‘British Ways of Life’. Having already completed
disbelief and overlook reality. The Butlin’s photographs
the crowd in picture after picture, warily confronting the
even for Parr, the photographs remained something of an
work for the first volume, ‘Exmoor Village’, in 1947, he went
are strange records of this being played out; they are
camera, resolute against the layers of artifice they have found
oddity, and an irrelevance for contemporary practice, until
on to photograph Ricoh’s circus for the second book, ‘British
documents, if we can use that word with any conviction, of
themselves caught up in, making a connection along tenuous
colour photography had undergone its own redefinition in
Circus Life’ published in 1948. ‘Profoundly moved’ by his
elaborate forms of staging being imposed on already highly
lines of sight, as if to remind us, even now, of their actual
Britain during the 1980s. In this period, although previously
experience of the circus, Hinde temporarily abandoned his
theatricalised spaces and environments. Within the themed
presence, of their bewilderment, their embarrassment, their
considered vulgar and irredeemably tainted by its commercial
photography career and began working as a circus manager
bars and ballrooms at Skegness, Clacton, Filey and Bognor,
resignation and their annoyance. Here we might consider
associations, colour now began to appear full of aesthetic
for Bertram Mills and Chipperfields, eventually launching
Orwell’s grottoes bizarrely come to life, lighting, props and
again that aversion to ‘putting on an act’, and, perhaps, the
potential. The impetus had largely come from American
his own travelling circus in Ireland, the John Hinde Show,
people are carefully rearranged, Butlin’s staff often act out
accompanying modest expectation for a kind of authenticity,
photography of the 1970s19, and especially from the example
in 1955. Unlike Butlin, the ‘old-fashioned showman’, whose
the roles of holidaymakers, attractive women are placed in
even though its precise coordinates have been long forgotten.
of William Eggleston’s work, but there were pressing national
success in fairgrounds and seaside fun fairs was the natural,
the foreground, and, once again, there is the ever-present,
There are unequivocal looks of pleasure beaming from
circumstances affecting how colour was taken up in Britain and
and significant, precursor to his holiday camp empire, Hinde’s
strategic deployment of exaggerated, almost luminous colour.
Hinde’s pictures it is true; real laughs appear to erupt more
for many young photographers it became, explicitly, a means
foray into circus ownership was a short-lived disaster, and
The photographs are an elaborate performance designed to
or less spontaneously even as the camps try to prescribe
of reinvigorating the critical voice of documentary at a time of
he quickly returned to photography, setting up his own
promote an idealised, relentlessly fun-filled and marketable
what fun is and Hinde’s pictures try desperately to orchestrate
radical social and political change. It was this new awareness
postcard company, again in Ireland, in 1956. But the love of
alternative to the real atmospheres and experiences of the
it. But weighing against this is a pervading sense of mild
of and commitment to colour, and the currency of a discordant
spectacle and artifice evidently lingered and proved to be a
holiday camps, and to divert attention away as far as possible
estrangement, the self-consciousness of people who, as the
form of social commentary revelling in colour’s uncomfortably
vital ingredient of his commercial success in photography.
from the actual fabric of the places: from their tawdry interiors,
shutter release fixes them in history, look as if they have
bright contrasts and abrasive tone, that created the context
This is made palpable in Hinde’s images through their
jerry-built sets, and from what, by the late 70s and 80s – as
been conscripted into an alternative, brightly painted form
in which Hinde’s strange and previously inconspicuous
of National Service, suddenly conscious of their place in
photographs became celebrated.
16
18
– had become their
reappraisal of the photographs in the 1990s, and part of their
painstaking attention to both staging and the dramatic impact
both photographers and visitors attest
of heightened colour – the vitally important colour separations
increasingly worn, paint-peeled surfaces. Of course the fact
someone else’s plywood and plastic approximation of their
being meticulously produced, under Hinde’s personal
that the photographs only partially achieve this, that the bars
wildest dreams.
17
supervision, by specialist printers in Milan .
and ballrooms still look like rudimentary makeovers by a local
By the late eighties, when Martin Parr began to make a concerted effort to promote the photographs, it could be convincingly suggested that Hinde’s commercial enterprise
The signature motifs of Hinde’s landscape postcards were
was part of the complex lineage of the new British colour
back-to-the-camera foreground figures who, as we look at
photography. And by then also, the idea of Hinde as a
the card, seem to look with us out across the view – their
foundational reference point for Parr’s own work made more
jumpers often overly saturated in red to emphasise both
sense. At heart, Parr had always been a humourist; his black
their presence and that shared, pleasurable act of looking.
and white photographs of the 1970s make up a gentle satire
Or there are the strategically placed cars, in red or bright
of Britain, its people hapless participants in the rituals of what
yellow, to give an idea of scale and provide focus, and again
has been called a ‘waning national culture’20. But when he
to suggest a sense of connection with the travelling eye of the
turned to colour in around 1983, Parr’s comedy of manners
holidaymaker. These areas of colour, so intense they almost
took on a mordant tone in keeping with what had become
float free from the image, made Hinde’s postcards stand out against their competitors on the revolving display stands at
Left to right:
holiday resorts. But in the ornate, crowded interiors and busy
The Viennese Ballroom, Clacton
recreational spaces of Butlin’s, the visual challenges were
South Seas Bar, Clacton
more demanding, the dramatic frisson between photographic
© John Hinde Archive
|
15
14 |
The John Hinde Studio
sensibility and subject was more complex, and the results
theatre group on a low budget and a tight schedule, and that
Hinde Revisited
The tensions between naturalism and artificiality, between
were far more extravagant.
an air of barely suppressed boredom lingers in almost all the
These notes of discord in the theatrical encounter between
pictures, only adds to their surreal quality and kitsch value for
Hinde’s style of photography and Butlin’s style of holiday
later, more sophisticated photographic audiences.
entertainment were important to the rediscovery and
relaxation and uncertain role playing, are at the heart of one of the most enduring visual records of Butlin’s holiday
In many ways the pictures that Hinde’s staff photographers,
camps in the 1960s, 70s and 80s: the photographs of John
Elmar Ludwig, Edmund Nägele and David Noble, produced
Hinde’s studio. ‘Johnny’ Hinde shared with Billy Butlin a
at Butlin’s from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s represent
But it is also the faces and expressions that stare back
attraction for Martin Parr, who largely oversaw that process.
background in travelling entertainments. In the late forties,
a meeting of minds. Both Hinde and Billy Butlin were
from Hinde’s photographs, the people who look at the
While a student at Manchester Polytechnic, Parr had spent
already recognised as an accomplished colour photographer,
interested in the fabrication of illusions, both traded on
photographer, and so at us across the decades that have
the summers of 1971 and 72 working as a staff photographer
he was commissioned by George Harrap’s publishing
the mass appeal and commercial potential of the dream-
passed, who add some deeper resonance to the images
at Butlin’s in Filey, and having been impressed by Hinde’s
company to produce photographs for a series of books
like sensation, and the concomitant willingness to suspend
and are part of their lasting value. We see them staring from
images began collecting his postcards from that point. But,
entitled ‘British Ways of Life’. Having already completed
disbelief and overlook reality. The Butlin’s photographs
the crowd in picture after picture, warily confronting the
even for Parr, the photographs remained something of an
work for the first volume, ‘Exmoor Village’, in 1947, he went
are strange records of this being played out; they are
camera, resolute against the layers of artifice they have found
oddity, and an irrelevance for contemporary practice, until
on to photograph Ricoh’s circus for the second book, ‘British
documents, if we can use that word with any conviction, of
themselves caught up in, making a connection along tenuous
colour photography had undergone its own redefinition in
Circus Life’ published in 1948. ‘Profoundly moved’ by his
elaborate forms of staging being imposed on already highly
lines of sight, as if to remind us, even now, of their actual
Britain during the 1980s. In this period, although previously
experience of the circus, Hinde temporarily abandoned his
theatricalised spaces and environments. Within the themed
presence, of their bewilderment, their embarrassment, their
considered vulgar and irredeemably tainted by its commercial
photography career and began working as a circus manager
bars and ballrooms at Skegness, Clacton, Filey and Bognor,
resignation and their annoyance. Here we might consider
associations, colour now began to appear full of aesthetic
for Bertram Mills and Chipperfields, eventually launching
Orwell’s grottoes bizarrely come to life, lighting, props and
again that aversion to ‘putting on an act’, and, perhaps, the
potential. The impetus had largely come from American
his own travelling circus in Ireland, the John Hinde Show,
people are carefully rearranged, Butlin’s staff often act out
accompanying modest expectation for a kind of authenticity,
photography of the 1970s19, and especially from the example
in 1955. Unlike Butlin, the ‘old-fashioned showman’, whose
the roles of holidaymakers, attractive women are placed in
even though its precise coordinates have been long forgotten.
of William Eggleston’s work, but there were pressing national
success in fairgrounds and seaside fun fairs was the natural,
the foreground, and, once again, there is the ever-present,
There are unequivocal looks of pleasure beaming from
circumstances affecting how colour was taken up in Britain and
and significant, precursor to his holiday camp empire, Hinde’s
strategic deployment of exaggerated, almost luminous colour.
Hinde’s pictures it is true; real laughs appear to erupt more
for many young photographers it became, explicitly, a means
foray into circus ownership was a short-lived disaster, and
The photographs are an elaborate performance designed to
or less spontaneously even as the camps try to prescribe
of reinvigorating the critical voice of documentary at a time of
he quickly returned to photography, setting up his own
promote an idealised, relentlessly fun-filled and marketable
what fun is and Hinde’s pictures try desperately to orchestrate
radical social and political change. It was this new awareness
postcard company, again in Ireland, in 1956. But the love of
alternative to the real atmospheres and experiences of the
it. But weighing against this is a pervading sense of mild
of and commitment to colour, and the currency of a discordant
spectacle and artifice evidently lingered and proved to be a
holiday camps, and to divert attention away as far as possible
estrangement, the self-consciousness of people who, as the
form of social commentary revelling in colour’s uncomfortably
vital ingredient of his commercial success in photography.
from the actual fabric of the places: from their tawdry interiors,
shutter release fixes them in history, look as if they have
bright contrasts and abrasive tone, that created the context
This is made palpable in Hinde’s images through their
jerry-built sets, and from what, by the late 70s and 80s – as
been conscripted into an alternative, brightly painted form
in which Hinde’s strange and previously inconspicuous
of National Service, suddenly conscious of their place in
photographs became celebrated.
16
18
– had become their
reappraisal of the photographs in the 1990s, and part of their
painstaking attention to both staging and the dramatic impact
both photographers and visitors attest
of heightened colour – the vitally important colour separations
increasingly worn, paint-peeled surfaces. Of course the fact
someone else’s plywood and plastic approximation of their
being meticulously produced, under Hinde’s personal
that the photographs only partially achieve this, that the bars
wildest dreams.
17
supervision, by specialist printers in Milan .
and ballrooms still look like rudimentary makeovers by a local
By the late eighties, when Martin Parr began to make a concerted effort to promote the photographs, it could be convincingly suggested that Hinde’s commercial enterprise
The signature motifs of Hinde’s landscape postcards were
was part of the complex lineage of the new British colour
back-to-the-camera foreground figures who, as we look at
photography. And by then also, the idea of Hinde as a
the card, seem to look with us out across the view – their
foundational reference point for Parr’s own work made more
jumpers often overly saturated in red to emphasise both
sense. At heart, Parr had always been a humourist; his black
their presence and that shared, pleasurable act of looking.
and white photographs of the 1970s make up a gentle satire
Or there are the strategically placed cars, in red or bright
of Britain, its people hapless participants in the rituals of what
yellow, to give an idea of scale and provide focus, and again
has been called a ‘waning national culture’20. But when he
to suggest a sense of connection with the travelling eye of the
turned to colour in around 1983, Parr’s comedy of manners
holidaymaker. These areas of colour, so intense they almost
took on a mordant tone in keeping with what had become
float free from the image, made Hinde’s postcards stand out against their competitors on the revolving display stands at
Left to right:
holiday resorts. But in the ornate, crowded interiors and busy
The Viennese Ballroom, Clacton
recreational spaces of Butlin’s, the visual challenges were
South Seas Bar, Clacton
more demanding, the dramatic frisson between photographic
© John Hinde Archive
|
15