In 1987, Parr would move with his wife to Bristol, where he photographed his next project, The Cost of Living, which focused on the middle class as they became wealthier under Thatcher. He captured a variety of middle-class activities including shopping, parties, and events. Personally this shot isn’t as interesting content-wise as the other shots, but I still appreciate how Parr included this image to show more diversity of the people in New Brighton, enjoying the beach during their holidays.

A playful conversation between two important photographic archives, the book — and now the exhibition — consists of pairs. For each work by Martin Parr, there is a paired image from the Anonymous Project’s collection of found amateur photographs, taken between the 1950s and 80s. The Last Resort, an unflinching series of photographs of the working-class seaside resort of New Brighton in Merseyside, brought Martin Parr to wide public attention in the mid-1980s. The Last Resort is a series of forty photographs taken in New Brighton, a beach suburb of Liverpool. 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). Parr printed eleven images from The Last Resort in a large-format edition of five for his 2002 retrospective at the Barbican Art Gallery, London. New Brighton, Merseyside (25) is one of four works from this special edition owned by Tate.New York Private Photo Tours and Street Photography Group Workshops: Join me on a street photography walking workshop around New York City. They influenced me far more than anything else,” he says. “So for me it had to be colour, but no one used colour, and colour was expensive. So I was using outdated film because it was cheaper – outdated film and cine film, which I used to cut into sections myself. It was 10p per roll, and if you cut your own you’d have 20 in an hour.

Wood and Grant also shot people they knew, at least by sight, by virtue of having lived in the neighbourhood for so long; Wood shot compulsively, all the time – when he went on the bus, while he waited for the ferry, and when he went to the football or to the market. 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. The adult figure in the shot has her head decapitated on top of the frame– but you se her reflection in the window, looking as if she is going to eat something (this is a great composition). There is then another image in the sequence of arcade machines and rides– this time a surprised looking baby in a tank. It is a pretty powerful image– as it looks as if the tank is heading straight towards you. And it isn’t any old tank– it is a ferocious looking one, with realistic-looking machine guns pointed straight ahead. And the unassuming child at head command. Photography is, by its nature, exploitative. It’s whether you use this process with a sense of responsibility or not. I feel that I do so. My conscience is clear.”Thus began a golden age for photography in New Brighton, which lasted until 2003 when Wood moved to his current home in North Wales. In the intervening 25 years, Ken Grant also lived in New Brighton from 1992-2002, studying for a spell at Wirral Met, and Martin Parr was based just 20 minutes away from 1982-1985. Between them the three photographers created a huge body of work on the seaside town, which is based just across the River Mersey from Liverpool in North England. Anyways– the composition of the photograph is great. The boy is perfectly framed by water– so there are no distracting or ugly overlaps. You also have a nice leading line from the right side of the pier– with people perfectly space apart, legs stretching into the water. The concrete pier and the water frame the boy superbly well. Also the scan above doesn’t do justice (the printed book has a much nicer saturated blue color in the water). That also meant my photographs looked a certain way, but I wanted to keep my costs low so I could work freely,” he adds. “I never wanted to sell pictures to get commissions, I hated that sort of documentary story. The documentary photographs people seemed to love seemed to be arrive, spend a few days, get 10 pictures. I believed pictures should be useless. I did a bit of part-time teaching so I’d have that freedom to just do the work.” Note you also get a great sense of intimacy in the shot considering how low Parr got to take this photo — while also getting close to his subjects and filling his frame.

While I do like the balance of the shot– I feel that we already saw enough photos highlighting the trash and Parr could’ve done without this shot in the book. Also in the shot there are some distracting overlaps– with the old lady in the green/pink having a kid behind her, and the lady in white covering up another mom/daughter passing in the frame. As a documentary photographer, Martin Parr has spent his career attune to the tempo of life in Britain. His interests in consumerism, tourism and class have taken him across the country: to village fetes, boat races, and, of course, the seaside. This is another shot that mirrors the shot we saw earlier in the book with a familiar looking red pole (see shot below). Once again you see it littered with trash, as the little wastebasket attached to the pole is overflowing. The next shot in the sequence seems to be around the same area– by the murky water (with everyone sitting on the concrete). You see multiple actions going on– and a nice use of filling the frame by Parr. You have the little boy in the center holding up what looks like a wooden bicycle wheel with a heroic gesture (almost like a Roman statue), the woman with the red shirt and waving hair dipping her child playfully in the water, and the woman in the middle looking over with an exasperated gesture (hand on her face, and elbow slouched over her knees).

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The next shot is then a nice change of pace — you now zoom out from the previous shots which were shot closely. What is a bit gross is all the trash in the water on the right side of the frame. It doesn’t seem to be the most hygienic place to change the diaper of a child. Thirty years later, Parr brings a new approach to the same subject: the leisure pursuits of ordinary people. His new commission for the National Maritime Museum was displayed in The Great British Seaside exhibition. Cameras and styles over time

Note: All of the information this section has been lifted from the great introduction by Gerry Badger (including the information, context, history, and quotes):

This exhibition has already taken place

The boy appears completely absorbed in his task, concentrating on walking along the pipe. Parr discusses his work in autobiographical terms, and has talked about how, as a new father himself in the early 1980s, he was interested in photographing young families and children in New Brighton (Williams, p.160). Despite the dirty surroundings this image is a celebration of the pleasures of childhood, demonstrating that the intense concentration of play exists regardless of surroundings. The man in the middle of the frame looks quite lonely — smoking a cigarette by himself on a white beach towel which looks like it could seat two. The irony is that he is wearing a shirt that says: “Champion.”