The Photographers’ Gallery in Soho has a Print Sales Room downstairs, next to the book shop. Here they stage rotating exhibitions of works by the 40 or so photographers whose work they’re licensed to print and sell. Since their roster of artists includes some big international names, and because they always select the best of the best, it’s always worth paying a visit. Smaller and less pressurised than the main exhibitions in the galleries above, these discreet and petite displays regularly come close to pure visual pleasure.
Currently, they’re hosting photos by seven photographers, all on the theme of the English seaside. After the gruelling horrors of the Ernest Cole exhibition about apartheid South Africa, and the strange and mysterious Mexican culture photographed by Graciela Iturbide, it’s a relief to stroll into the ‘Carry On…’ simplicity of possibly the quintessential English subject.
John Hinde (1916 to 1997)
Hinde is in a way the most interesting snapper in the show because he is a historical figure. Born in 1916, he developed an interest in photography at the start of the war, from which he was excluded as a Quaker conscientious objector. He had a big hiatus in his life between the mid-40s and the mid-50s when he worked in a circus (!). In 1956 he set up a company to take photos of Ireland where he’d settled. The company wasn’t about high art but a commercial operation designed to sell postcards wholesale to shops or resort owners who sold them onto tourists and visitors.
At the time most postcards sold to tourists were in black and white, since this was felt to convey the misty romance of the landscape and quaint village ways. Hinde set out to find a way of achieving the same effect in colour. His experiments led him to develop a stylised and distinctive approach. His shoots were carefully posed. Anything ugly was covered or moved. There’s a variety of colour in the shots but they feel, at the same time, somehow bleached or dated. Partly that’s due to the colour technology available at the time which played tricks with colour. I remember the holiday snaps my dad took which were converted into slides having the same effect, which I can’t quite put into words. They looked colourful but faded at the same time. According to his Wikipedia article Hinde achieved a 1) idealistic and 2) nostalgic style, which can maybe be attributed to 1) the careful posing of the shot, and 2) the discreetly faded colouring.
His most famous set of images was from Butlins in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Billy Butlin hired Hinde to provide postcards for the hundreds of thousands of working class families who took advantage of his fun-for-all-the-family camps and low prices.
By this time, Hinde worked more as an art director than an actual photographer, so he hired two German photographers, Elmar Ludwig and Edmund Nägele, and one British photographer, David Noble. They toured Butlin’s camps and took great pains to compose and light each shot for best effect. The result is a peculiar combination of people in relaxed situations which somehow still feel formal. Apparently, Hinde enhanced the colours in post-production to give the shots a more vivid feel.
Despite the care he took, Hinde set no great store by the artistic value of his postcards and sold the company in 1972. But photography critics have taken them very seriously, and in 1993 Irish Museum of Modern Art held a retrospective of his photos and postcards in Dublin. I love it that the show was titled Hindesight.
‘Butlins Bognor Regis, Lounge Adjoining Heated Indoor Pool’ by John Hinde (photographed by Edmund Nagele) (Courtesy of the artist and The Photographers’ Gallery)
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen (b. 1948)
Born in Finland, Konttinen moved to London to study film in the late 1960s at the Polytechnic in Regent Street. In 1968, she co-founded the Amber Film and Photography Collective, which moved to Newcastle in 1969. From 1969 Konttinen lived in Byker, an area of Newcastle, and for seven years photographed and interviewed the residents of this area of terraced houses until her own house was demolished. She became a real member of the community, capturing locals in all moods, before the entire area was destroyed to make way for the Byker housing estate, which was to become notorious.
This work resulted in the book, Byker, and, today, this body of work is considered by UNESCO to be of high national value as a profound account of the working class and marginalised communities in the North-East of England. In parallel she created a series depicting people on the chilly beaches of Whitley Bay and Tynemouth, titled Writing in the Sand (1978 to 1998) and it’s a couple of images from that album which are on display here.
‘Whitley Bay’ from ‘Writing in the Sand’ (1980) by Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen – £3,000 + VAT (Courtesy of the artist and The Photographers’ Gallery)
These, to be a bit harsh, are good enough, but don’t have the same power as her urban shots, which are quite stunningly brilliant.
Martin Parr (b. 1952)
Parr has become very famous for capturing the ungainly, graceless aspects of everyday British life in big colour-saturated photography. In fact it was seaside photos that really brought him widespread recognition, namely the images in his breakthrough series ‘The Last Resort’ (1985), which captured the exploits of working class people on holiday in the seaside resort of New Brighton, Merseyside. The show features three prints from that project.
Whereas the human brain picks out only the leading actions in any scene, Parr’s photos show an immense attention to every detail in the frame, which is one source of their power and almost overwhelming impact. The gallery says this makes him a great satirical photojournalist and that’s true. But years ago I read a critic who described his capturing of the fat and ugly, the graceless and ungainly, the clumsy and awkward in British life, as ‘cruel’, and I’ve never been able to forget that word. If Parr’s work feels like this, it’s partly because the size and brilliant clarity of his images have a kind of unrelenting quality which, in me at least, creates a negative impact. They’re visually merciless.
‘Ice cream kids, New Brighton, England, 1983-85’ by Martin Parr – £2,750 + VAT (©️ Martin Parr, courtesy of The Photographers’ Gallery / Rocket Gallery)
Anna Fox (b. 1961)
Fox is, apparently, known for her ‘combative, highly charged by the use of flash and colour’. According to Wikipedia she’s part of the ‘second wave’ of British colour documentary photography. Seeing her use of saturated colour to capture scenes of ‘ordinary people’ (meaning working class people) in a not totally flattering way, it comes as no surprise to learn that one of the tutors on her degree course was Martin Parr. He has, apparently, spawned a tradition.
Similarly secondary was her decision to spend two years photographing Butlins Bognor Regis. Surprising really. Wouldn’t it be a tad more modern to cover somewhere like Center Parcs, let alone acknowledge that anyone who can these days, and for some time past, goes on holiday abroad? Brits made 55 million holidays abroad in 2023, mostly to Spain, with 17.8 million trips. Sun, sand and sangria long ago trumped the sad holiday camp. Not to be too critical, the choice feels a bit retro and, if it was chosen in order to capture proles at play, a bit patronising.
‘Hair and Make-up Shop, 2010’ by Anna Fox – £2,200 + VAT (Courtesy of the artist and The Photographers’ Gallery)
Simon Roberts (b. 1974)
Roberts is known for his interest in identity as the titles of his books – Motherland (2007), We English (2009), Pierdom (2013) and Merrie Albion (2017) – suggest. Pierdom, as the name suggests, is a comprehensive survey of Britain’s pleasure piers, contrasting their historical significance with their modern contexts. For me, the widescreen, long-distance nature of his shots here made them feel flat and empty. I think I can see the effect he’s striving for, but the architectural features of Blackpool Pier just aren’t distinct or striking enough to justify the treatment.
Blackpool South Pier, Lancashire, 2008 by Simon Roberts (Courtesy of the artist and The Photographers’ Gallery)
Rob Ball (b. 1977)
Ball has been photographing the coast for fifteen years, viewing the coastline as an intrinsic part of British identity. He examines the rhythms of seaside resorts and the changes that arise from seasonal and generational shifts. I found his images of just buildings, bereft of the people who give them meaning, sad and depressing. They have a kind of stark power, maybe, and usually I like photos of bleak architecture, but for some reason found these soulless.
‘Slots of fun, Blackpool, 2022’ by Rob Ball – £600 + VAT (Courtesy of the artist and The Photographers’ Gallery)
Luke Stephenson (b. 1983)
Stephenson records the quirks of the British character. He combines demotic i.e. popular subject matter, with the studied formality of not just studio portraiture but a fine art approach. 99 x 99s does what it says on the tin, being a collection of formal portraits of the legendary 99 whipped ice cream, complete with Cadburys flake and a variety of colourful sauces, which he took on an extended road trip round the seaside resorts of England. Part of the culinary heritage which explains why 70% of British men and 60% of British women are overweight, and about a fifth of British children are obese. Taste yummy though, don’t they?
#97 Dawlish Warren, 2013 by Luke Stephenson – £850 + VAT (Courtesy of the artist and The Photographers’ Gallery)
In the studied isolation and formality which converts them from real life objects to icons, they reminded me of Andy Warhol’s Campbell soup tins or Coca Cola cans. You can easily imagine them being arranged as grids of images, maybe given the Warhol silk screen treatment, and sold to adorn board rooms and meeting rooms or, like one TV company I worked for, the canteen. Or, for a joke, placed next to an actual Mr Whippy machine with racks of cones and flakes in some cool advertising or tech company.
Other seasides
To give this fun little display more seriousness than it intends, it made me realise that there are plenty of other kinds of English seaside. A friend is a naturist so I immediately thought of nudist camps, not so much for the bare bodies but the joie de vivre she always glows with. Another friend works for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and he spends a lot of his time at the coast counting seabirds. Twitchers, they’re everywhere. There’s a lot of nature-watching goes on at the British coast, and not just birds but pond-dipping and rock-pooling for, crabs and such, and spotting the dolphins and seals and whales which are sometimes visible. At Croyde in Devon my son and I learned to surf and there are surfers and windsurfers all round the coast. We admired the rock climbers we saw ascending the perilous cliffs. And of course, sailing. Lots of sailing. The English coast is littered with docks and quays and marinas and all manner of pleasure boats from humble dinghies to swanky yachts.
So I enjoyed this little display, and I know it’s only meant to be a piece of light-hearted summer fun, but it triggered thoughts of how much more varied, active and interesting our engagement with the coast is than when John Hinde made his postcards of Butlins in the 1960s. Although there are seven photographers in this show they have, I think, been curated to depict a very narrow and rather dated vision of ‘the seaside’. Surely there’s a lot more to it than chilly beaches, shabby piers and amusement arcades.
For sale
All the prints are for sale, at prices starting from £600 + VAT but quickly rising to the thousands. If you could only have one, which one would you choose? For me it would be a toss-up between the Butlins lounge and the old lady on the beach with a dog.
All profits from print sales support The Photographers’ Gallery public programme.
Related link
- By the Seaside continues at the Photographers’ Gallery until 8 September 2024
The photographers’ PG pages
The photographers’ websites
- John Hinde Collection
- Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen
- Martin Parr
- Anna Fox
- Simon Roberts
- Rob Ball
- Luke Stephenson
Books & Boots 