The Last Resort: Photographs of New Brighton

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Parr’s off-kilter framing repeatedly emphasizes this point, as does the somewhat genteel, very English absurdity that he favours, such as with the well-known image of a woman sunbathing next to the tracks of a large earth-mover while a tweedy gent floats obliviously by in the background.

Tom is very loved [in New Brighton], he’s the ‘Photieman’,” she says, referencing the nickname Wood picked up from the kids in the local area. She has commented, ‘There’s no cynicism in Parr’s gaze, just interest, excitement and a real sense of the comedic’ (Williams, p.He was, at the very least, a middle-class interloper, whose suspect motivations were already hinted at by the supposed cruelty of his pictures – and, at worst, an agent of subversion, attacking the very foundations of English life, and of the documentary tradition from which he sprang. Art critic David Lee, amongst many others, interpreted The Last Resort as cruel and voyeuristic, claiming that the working-class were portrayed as “fat, simple, styleless, tediously conformist and unable to assert any individual identity”. His new commission for the National Maritime Museum was displayed in The Great British Seaside exhibition.

iv] In the conversation – and controversy – around Parr’s work, what exactly ‘class’ meant was often left tellingly undefined, as it is by necessity here. The series was exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery, London and published as a book in 1986, and was instrumental in establishing Parr’s reputation as a photographer.So I think part of my job is to try and highlight the more surreal aspects of beach life, daily life, and illustrate that through photography. I studied fine art part-time [a Fine Art Painting BA at Leicester Polytechnic], then went back to the car factory where I had worked before.

However, the choice Parr’s critics seemed to offer between unmitigated cruelty on the one hand and rose-tinted nostalgia on the other was, ultimately, a false one. Kristian Martin, Curator of The Great British Seaside, describes Parr as ‘the natural successor’ to Ray-Jones who pioneered non-commercial art photography in the UK. By the time Tom Wood had arrived the pier had just been demolished, and by the 1990s, when Grant arrived, the advent of cheap flights had encouraged British holiday makers to seek out warmer climes. We will process the personal data you have supplied in accordance with our privacy policy (available on request). The finished Poster will then be sealed using archival paper backing, wired ready for hanging and with wall-friendly footers.If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations). Even the words ‘Last Resort’ were forbidden after the book – it’s the end of the Bank Holiday, all that litter,” she adds.