The Last Resort: Photographs of New Brighton

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Published as part of Magnum’s summer series of stories: ‘Life by the Sea: Exploring identity through society at leisure and the pursuit of pleasure’. He says it’s partly inspired by the photographs he saw when he was starting out, which – because it was the 1970s and both photobooks and photography exhibitions were scarce – were snapshots and postcards rather than documentary photography, printed in colour but faded with time. vii] Gerry Badger, Ruthless Courtesies: The Making of Martin Parr in The Pleasures of Good Photographs, Aperture, 2010, found here: http://www. There is a certain edginess about these images, which could be said to capture the zeitgeist of 1980s England.

It is, in many ways, the most early significant achievement of Parr’s long, varied career and of the loose, somewhat controversial ‘new colour’ movement of those years.There is in these pictures a human complexity that belies whatever simplistic ideas we – and their initial audience – might want to impose on the lives (or moments from lives, really) that are being shown. In 1986, Parr published Last Resort, a collection of photographs documenting working class members of the public on holiday in New Brighton. He has developed an international reputation for his innovative imagery, his oblique approach to social documentary, and his input to photographic culture within the UK and abroad. I was surprised how much David focussed on my early life and in particular on how I’d been brought up in the seaside resort of Rhyl on the North Wales coast. And Marshall’s words raise another moot point, which is what staging this show in New Brighton could mean for the town and its people.

The show exhibited Parr's own collection of objects, postcards, his personal photography collection of both British and International artists, photo books and finally his own photographs.

These photographs lay the groundworks for the iconic Parr series documenting the seaside town of New Brighton 'The Last Resort', which was taken from 1983 to 1985. vii] This difference in ‘emphasis,’ a difference that Badger considers as much stylistic as anything else, meant that Killip’s work was not subjected to the same kind of criticism as Parr’s.

Parr’s work was focused, shot over three summers and, shortly after the show with Wood, published as a book, the seminal The Last Resort (1986). And because I was always doing pictures, going to the same places year after year, I became part of the scenery. Stacks of cones sit on a table beside her, complete with syrupy stains from previous hurried transactions. It’s not a defined project but it’s really specific in a way – I see it differently because I grew up there,” he adds. Similarly, to describe the work now, with the benefit of hindsight, as ‘warm’ or ‘affectionate’ in its portrayal of a given class is perhaps true, but it also ascribes an almost moral purpose to something that is more usefully understood in sociological – and indeed, photographic – terms.Parr is right in the action, looking directly at the crowd and the small dramas that make it up, from their midst.