There is a certain edginess about these images, which could be said to capture the zeitgeist of 1980s England.

But third, there’s the fact of putting the images back into the context in which they were shot – in a venue with windows on all sides, which look out at the locations of some of the photographs. Parr’s expressive use of colour was inspired by the commercial language used by the American photographers Stephen Shore and William Eggleston, who both used their medium to legitimise colour photography. In this image he featured women in a beauty contest, bearing their bodies in swimwear and high heels, each holding a number and preparing to be scrutinised. She has also curated exhibitions for institutions such as The Photographers Gallery and Lianzhou Foto Festival. 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.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”. The indefatigable artist has been the subject of exhibitions at the world’s most prestigious institutions, from the Museum of Modern Art and Centre Pompidou to the Stedelijk Museum and Tate Modern. 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.

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. Dating from the years 1983 to 1985, the scenes of English working-class people taking a break at the seaside display the bright, saturated colours that have become a hallmark of the British photographer’s work. And there is certainly room for pathos as well, such as with the old couple lost in thought and mutual silence, waiting for their tea, in the poignant image that opens the book.The photographs comprising The Last Resort were taken between 1983 and 1985, a period of economic decline in northwest England.

Much of his work has still not been printed, and it would take six months just to go through all the negatives, he says; he also has 700 hours of video. And for Marshall, Grant’s images also have a different quality because he is different person to both Parr and Wood, with a different manner with people.It’s a classic of quirky design, with all sorts of pastel-coloured doodads scattered across the pages. After graduating from Manchester Polytechnic in 1973, Parr emerged onto the scene with a series of black and white photographs heavily inspired by the work of fellow British documentary photographer, Tony Ray-Jones. In 1986, Parr published Last Resort, a collection of photographs documenting working class members of the public on holiday in New Brighton. It also marks a peak of intimacy and complex picture-making that he hasn’t recaptured since, despite producing several other accomplished bodies of work, and the reason for this lies, at least partly, in how the work was perceived at the time of its initial release. In changeable weather, he spent a week leading up to the August Bank Holiday photographing the Essex coast: at Clacton-on-Sea, he captured a group of Hindu women commemorating the last day of the Holy month of Shravan, at Walton-on-the-Naze he found a sun-loving couple settling down in front of their beach hut trying to catch what rays they could and at Shoeburyness he snapped an elderly man taking gentle exercise on the promenade watched by a more reticent friend.

Parr himself has claimed, ‘I’m less interested in the fact that these people aren’t well off financially as in the fact that they have to deal with screaming kids, like anyone has to . For them it was to save the cost of a taxi, and for us it was good money – though pushing an overloaded pram, perhaps half a mile or so, through the streets of Rhyl, with the family trailing behind, could be an exhausting task.

But you do have people who say he defeated our town and for the last 20 years we have never bounced back. Shot with a medium format camera and daylight flash, the photographs are an early example of Parr’s characteristic saturated colour, influenced by the American colour photography of William Eggleston (born 1939) and Garry Winogrand (1928-84).