美好的一天反思最后的度假胜地 | A GOOD DAY OUT REFLECTING UPON THE LAST RESORT

 

将近四分之一世纪的时间里，无论是在英国摄影还是马丁帕尔的职业生涯中，都很难低估《最后的度假胜地》的重要性。对两者而言，它代表了摄影表达基本模式的巨大变化，从单色到彩色，这是一种根本性的技术变革，预示着纪实摄影新基调的发展。这种以帕尔为重要催化剂的基调转变并不局限于英伦三岛。这也标志着欧洲摄影蓬勃发展时期的开始，以及后来被称为“新欧洲彩色摄影”的模式。

 

摄影界的老将也没有张开双臂欢迎这种修辞上的根本变化，尤其是那些认为清醒的黑白是同情记录当代生活的正确媒介的人。 《最后的度假胜地》在 1986 年出版时受到了明确的褒贬不一。，因为帕尔，尤其是这部作品，被认为包含了当时摄影辩论中一个特别有争议的问题，以及英国摄影对所谓的撒切尔时代的反应。

 

Martin Parr 并不是第一位在纪实模式下使用色彩的英国摄影师，但他无疑是先锋。他认为他的朋友彼得·米切尔（Peter Mitchell）启发了他从单色转向彩色，这是发生在他看到米切尔 1979 年在约克印象画廊举办的展览“维京四号太空任务的新驳斥”后，。帕尔深情地回忆说，这是他第一次看到一位年轻的英国摄影师拍摄的严肃彩色摄影作品。 Mitchell 正面拍摄了 Leeds 的工厂和小商店，就像 Stephen Shore 一样，整个展览的概念对 Parr 来说是非常宝贵的。展览的标题提出了这样一个想法，即外星人在执行地球有关的太空任务时，看到的利兹是什么样的。

 

帕尔还对威廉·埃格尔斯顿、斯蒂芬·肖尔和乔尔·迈耶罗维茨等美国摄影师的色彩作品印象深刻，在不同的层面上，彩色明信片也给帕尔留下了深刻的印象。他购买了一台 Plaubel Makina 6 x 7cm 旁轴相机，这是一项至关重要的购买，因为它使他的底片比他以前的 35 毫米相机大得多，因此细节更精细。但 Plaubel 几乎与较小的相机一样轻巧且易于使用 - 使他能够以更静态的较大格式的详细分辨率制作快速的“街头照片”。这台特殊的相机确实彻底改变了某些摄影师的摄影方式，可以说新欧洲彩色摄影的整个美学很大程度上归功于Plaubel。

 

1982年，帕尔和他的妻子苏西从爱尔兰搬到了沃拉西，隔着默西河面对利物浦。他开始用Plaubel他的相机在利物浦和曼彻斯特拍摄，随后是在距离他的新家几英里的新布莱顿拍摄。1978年，他的朋友、摄影师大卫查德威克将他介绍到该镇，并如鱼得水一般。现在，他经常在另一位住在附近的摄影师汤姆伍德的陪伴下重新使用彩色摄影。

 

当他还是个孩子的时候，他的祖父不仅向他介绍了摄影的乐趣，而且还向他介绍了英国海边的乐趣，例如斯卡伯勒等约克郡的度假胜地。而对于他的中产阶级出身的背景来说，经典的英国海滨胜地，尤其是在 1960 年代，是禁果，因为和许多禁果一样，它很粗俗。作为文化，这显然是低俗的，但对于年轻的帕尔（显然是晚年的帕尔）来说，海边立刻变得诱人。正如他所说，如果海边是邋遢脏乱的，而且不仅仅是一点点破败，它也是充满活力的' 帕尔的脑海中形成了一个简单的 - 或不那么简单的相关性。 邋遢脏乱通常意味着有活力。 而有活力恰恰为街头摄影师提供了最佳的奖赏。然后，再一次，托尼·雷-琼斯（Tony Ray-Jones）对他的作品产生了重大影响，他是1960年代后期最后一位认真记录英国海边怪癖的著名摄影师。

 

因此，从1983年到1985年，帕尔经常前往新布莱顿，创作了定义他职业生涯的作品，我们可以在本书中欣赏这些作品。 1983 年和 1984 年的夏天都异常炎热，因此新布莱顿在周末和银行假日吸引了异常多的人群，确保度假村人满为患，因此也是最热闹的。不可避免地，在最俗气的情况下，到处都是垃圾，并承受着来自成群结队饥肠辘辘的，急着喂饱孩子，想哄孩子开心的人们的巨大压力，而这些这是帕尔的食物和饮料。

 

当 The Last Resort 于 1986 年出现时，以及同年 8 月在伦敦蛇形画廊展出的照片时，批评的反应是极端的。我想简要地研究一下它们，因为它们不仅揭示了马丁·帕尔的一些东西，而且揭示了当时英国摄影和英国社会的狭隘本质——无论他是否完全了解，他都在挑战这一点。毕竟，帕尔只是拍照片。正如瓦尔威廉姆斯正确指出的那样，最后的度假胜地基本上是“寻找的练习！例如，艺术评论家大卫李的评论虽然承认作品的诗意，但谴责帕尔（作为中产阶级摄影师）对工人阶级采取了傲慢的态度：

 

'（帕尔）习惯性地发现游客在最糟糕的情况下贪婪地吃和喝垃圾食品，并随意丢弃容器和包装纸，这可能会使自由良心陷入圣洁。我们历史悠久的工人阶级，通常由纪实摄影师慷慨地处理，成为更老练的观众的攻击目标。他们看起来很胖，简单，没有风格，乏味的墨守成规，无法断言任何个人身份。他们穿着廉价华丽的衣服，并以真正保守的方式接受了他们微薄的命运。只有婴儿和儿童会被嘲笑，而正是他们被包含在许多照片中，这使帕尔对绝望的尖刻愿景具有诗意的触感”

 

罗伯特·莫里斯对《英国摄影杂志》中作品的反应与此类似。

 

“这是一个阴冷、幽闭的噩梦世界，人们躺在齐膝深的碎纸里，在被污染的黑色水池里游泳，凝视着城市废弃的荒凉地平线。”

 

这种极端批评的原因是什么？当时我没能在作品中看到它，在我看来，它既深情又温柔，又尖酸刻薄。它当然是锐利的——但如果不具备敏锐而敏锐的视野，对摄影师的要求是什么？我必须说，我对一些更具讽刺意味的评论感到惊讶，我怀疑这些评论家根本没有看这些反映了他们自身阶层问题的画面，至少，他们似乎并没有和我看相同的照片。

 

“城市衰落”？可以肯定的是，与许多英国度假村一样，从 1960 年代开始，新布莱顿因向欧洲推出廉价套餐假期而遭受经济损失，这一过程影响了对该镇的新投资。然而，英国海滨城镇的生意一直有些不稳定，自 1920 年代以来，小型度假村一直处于缓慢衰退的过程中。某种肮脏的气息，褪色的外墙需要轻轻一抹油漆，以及事物是暂时的感觉，一直是海边的一个特征，即使在像老布莱顿这样成功的城镇也是如此。但新布莱顿的丽都 - 书中很多照片都在这里拍摄的室外游泳池 - 看起来虽然不是一流的修复，但也只是在书中的第二张照片，关于海滨避难所中一块破裂的窗格，表露了一些衰落。剩下的就是垃圾，这是一天之内那么多人挤进这个地方的必然结果，而一些东西将在星期一银行假日后的星期二清理干净。

 

游客们状态最糟的时刻？看在上帝的份上，帕尔正在拍摄一个拥挤的度假胜地。贝尼多姆或康尼岛则略有不同。普通人，出去玩得开心，但与其他普通人并肩作战。这里没有描绘出彻头彻尾的痛苦，实际上我们看到了人与人之间的感情，尤其是成年人对孩子的感情。只有在两张人们在雨中蜷缩在躺椅上的照片中，我们才能看到某种忧郁，但这些都是英国海边肖像画的伟大传统，就像手帕作为即兴的遮阳帽一样——帕尔在这里让我们幸免于难。

 

事实上，我认为总体上这种随心所欲、能呆在哪儿就呆在哪儿的氛围是本书的基本主题之一，即使不是最主要的主题的话——英国人对“冷静下来，继续前进”的努力，在不理想的条件下积极的获得可能的最好的结果，并且在面对看似无法克服的困难时表现出几乎是战时的坚忍。

 

例如，考虑一下美丽的红发女郎，她转身看着帕尔的相机，对摄影师的打扰感到恼火，然后转身面对急需她卖的冰淇淋的孩子们。或者是令人感动的裸照日光浴者，脸朝下——不是在海滩上——而是在挖土机阴影下的混凝土坡道上。人们忍不住笑了，不是对她，而是对她的处境和她的毅力，以及帕尔的观察之美。当我看着这些图片并写下这些文字时，我们刚刚度过了一个春季银行假期。就在昨天，当我在萨福克郡 Dunwich 的一家海滨咖啡馆吃炸鱼薯条时，The Last Resort 迷人的邋遢世界在我面前展开，几乎没有改变——马丁·帕尔的敏锐和喜爱都栩栩如生再现，就在我眼前。

 

然而，反对这本书的批评浪潮已经发生了戏剧性的转变。 2008 年 10 月，The Last Resort 的作品被选为《卫报》的 1000 件生前必看的艺术品之一，而 Elisabeth Mahoney 对这一选择的看法现在似乎（正确地）占了上风

 

“当时，马丁·帕尔在威勒尔河上一个破旧的海滨景点新布莱顿拍摄的一系列照片被视为居高临下。但现在他们看起来幽默地投入和喜爱，将英国工人阶级的角落和缝隙带入视野，并提醒我们这片土地在艺术摄影中是多么不寻常”。

 

而且，正如 Val Williams 所观察到的

 

“那么《最后的度假胜地》为什么让评论它的人如此害怕和厌恶？有一些垃圾，诚然，但远不及膝，还有一些胖人，但他们并不庞大，也不占大多数。有一群婴儿似乎玩得很开心，吃，喝，甚至微笑，还有很多非常漂亮的女人参加选美比赛，跳舞，晒日光浴，和其他女人聊天。有些家庭很可能在撒切尔主义下受苦，但他们仍然设法度过美好的一天'

 

当然，马奥尼和威廉姆斯有马后炮的好处，但即使在它制作的时候，帕尔的深情的一面也应该是显而易见的。如果不是立即，至少在他的下一个项目出现时，DPA 的一个委员会 - 纪录片摄影档案馆 - 位于曼彻斯特理工学院。在索尔福德拍摄并命名为销售点，于 1986 年在曼彻斯特展出，同年《最后的度假胜地》在伦敦蛇形画廊展出。

 

我认为，只有将两者放在一起考虑，才能对我们现在所知的“Parrworld”的初始构造进行更全面的描述。如果最后的度假胜地在他的色彩作品中展示了一个主要的主题 - 休闲 - 索尔福德的作品集中在另一个 - 消费主义上。这两个系列在美学和修辞上都对他的愿景做出了同样的贡献。两者都是经典的帕尔，日常生活画面以特定方式固定，颜色起着至关重要的作用，尽管自相矛盾的是，它们与颜色无关。多亏了 Plaubel相机，它们刻画得很尖锐，语气讽刺，但并非没有温暖——远远超过乍一看。它们反映了一种特殊的时代精神，当然是撒切尔时代，但特别是在撒切尔夫人之前一段时间开始的工业衰退时代。制造业和重工业几乎消失了。休闲和消费主义对英国社会的许多阶层来说变得越来越重要——矛盾的是，也许对那些既没有多少空闲时间也没有办法贪婪消费的人来说更是如此。

 

这是由货币主义驱动的社会的一个方面。与此同时，马丁·帕尔的好朋友克里斯·克利普（Chris Klip）正在拍摄铁娘子激进的保守派所产生的狗咬狗态度的另一个方面。 保守主义- 被边缘化下层阶级创造出来的，就在撒切尔的反工会政策似乎故意针对英格兰北部地区时。但是帕尔。应该指出的是，始终关注的是中心而不是边缘，这就是 1970 年代和 1980 年代这两个关于工人阶级生活的关键愿景如此不同的原因。

 

如果当时的评论者能考虑到相关性而多关注一些与《最后的度假胜地》相关的《销售点》，那么可能会避免对前者的一些更极端的反应。《销售点》确实体现了评论家在《最后的度假胜地》中所抓住的凶猛、快餐、大卖场的消费主义，但它也流露出一种深情的敬意，以及对传统生活方式和传统生意方式的消亡的遗憾。这一点在帕尔关于索尔福德工作进展的迷人日记中变得很清楚，很遗憾他没有为新布莱顿做同样的事情。

 

如果你看的足够仔细，这个遗憾也存在于《最后的度假胜地》中。事实上，你只需要看看。书的开篇画面，一对或许已经辞职但有尊严的老夫妇在茶室里——它必须是茶室，而不是新奇的咖啡馆——立即表明了帕尔对正在改变和受到威胁的生活方式的关注。它与索尔福德理发店的两名女性照片完美对应，这是《销售点》的关键形象。这一时期的帕尔当然有讽刺意味——其中最大的一个可能是一个自封的杂货商的女儿（指撒切尔夫人）威胁到了帕尔喜爱记录的英国小企业，取而代之的是大规模的、匿名的资本主义。他保留了他更尖刻的意见

 

我相信，要说与沃克·埃文斯 (Walker Evans) 的巨著《美国照片》(1938) 中所体现的态度有相似之处并不会太牵强，埃文斯 (Evans) 颂扬民间建筑的粗犷、个人主义品质，而不是结构顺滑秩序井然的大生意。 Parr 在《销售点》和《最后的度假胜地》中都在颂扬传统英国工人阶级粗暴的怪癖和弱点，当时一种隐匿的社团主义正在改变他们的购物和休闲习惯。就像不会流泪的埃文斯一样，帕尔这样做时没有一丝怀旧之情，也没有一丝讽刺的超然。

 

Parr 最喜欢的另一本摄影书是由两位葡萄牙摄影师 Victor Palla 和 Costa Martins 创作的。 Lisboa, cidade triste e alegre（里斯本，悲伤与欢乐之城）于 1959 年出版，记录了一个本质上是工人阶级的城市，在这里，遗憾和喜悦两种情绪都得到了同等程度的描绘。帕尔的书名《最后的度假胜地》，具有双刃剑的含义，也暗示了一本与里斯本相似的两面书——尽管直到他完成这本书之后，他才知道这本来自葡萄牙的书。

 

它可能不完全符合传统的 Picture Post 模式，但《最后的度假胜地》首先是对英国海滨度假胜地以及传统上光顾它们的工人阶级家庭的致敬。事实上，它可能比乍看之下更接近于 Picture Post 的传统，因为在某种程度上，感情胜过酸涩。这本书对英国和欧洲的摄影来说很重要，这本书展示了马丁帕尔发现了一种令人信服的当代摄影模式和一种看待世界的方式，这种方式在临床上是超然的，在一定程度上持怀疑态度，非常幽默，但又充满人文关怀

 

 

 

 

It is difficult from a perspective of almost a quarter of a century to underestimate the significance of The Last Resort, either in British photography or Martin Parr's career. For both, it represented a seismic change in the basic mode of photographic expression, from monochrome to colour, a fundamental technical change that heralded the development of a new tone in documentary photography. This shift in tone, with Parr as an important catalyst, was not confined to this island. It also marked the beginning of a period of vigorous revival in European photography, and the mode which came to be known as the 'New European Colour Photography'

 

Nor was this fundamental change in rhetoric welcomed with open arms by the old guard in photography, especially those who considered that sober black-and-white was the correct medium for the sympathetic recording of contemporary life. The Last Resort was given a decidedly mixed reception when published in 1986, as Parr, and this work in particular, were perceived to encapsulate an especially contentious issue in the photographic debate of the period and British photography's reaction to the so-called Thatcher Years.

 

Martin Parr was not the first British photographer working in the documentary mode to utilise colour, but he was certainly in the vanguard. He credits his friend, Peter Mitchell, as inspiring him to make the switch from monochrome, after he saw Mitchell's 1979 exhibition, A New Refutation of the Viking IV Space Mission, at Impressions Gallery in York. It was the first serious colour photography he'd seen by a young British photographer, Parr recalls fondly. Mitchell had photographed the facto- ries and small shops of Leeds head-on, à la Stephen Shore, and the whole concept of the exhibition was dear to Parr's heart. The exhibition's title proposed the idea that this was how Leeds might look to aliens mounting their own space mission to Earth.

 

Parr was also impressed by the colour work of American photographers such as William Eggleston, Stephen Shore and Joel Meyerowitz, and, on a different level, the colour postcard. He bought a Plaubel Makina 6 x 7cm rangefinder camera, a crucial purchase because it gave him the advantage of a much larger negative than his previous 35mm cameras, and therefore finer detail. But the Plaubel was almost as light and as easy to use as the smaller camera - enabling him to make fast 'street pictures with the detailed resolution of the more static larger formats. This particular camera, indeed, revolu- tionised photography for certain photographers, and it can be said that the whole aesthetic of the New European Colour Photography owes much to the Plaubel.

 

In 1982. Parr and his wife Susie had moved from Ireland to Wallasey, facing Liverpool across the Mersey. He began to photograph with the Plaubel, in Liverpool and Manchester and then in New Brighton, which was a few miles from his new home. He had been introduced to the town in 1978 by his friend, photographer David Chadwick, and had taken to it like a duck to water. Now he revisited using colour, often in the company of another photographer who lived nearby, Tom Wood.

 

When he was a child, his grandfather had introduced him not only to the delights of photography, but also to the pleasures of the English seaside, in the form of the Yorkshire resorts such as Scarborough. And for someone from his middle-class background, the classic English seaside resort, especially in the 1960s, was forbidden fruit, for the reason that, like much forbidden fruit, it was vulgar. As culture, it was distinctly lowbrow, yet for the young Parr (and clearly the Parr of later years), the seaside was immediately seductive. As he says, if the seaside was tatty, and more than a little run-down, it was also vibrant' A simple - or not-so-simple- correlation was formed in Parr's mind. Tatty frequently means lively. And lively clearly promises rewards for the street photographer. Then again, another great influence upon his work, Tony Ray-Jones, had been the last photographer of note to make a serious chronicle of the quirks of the British seaside, back in the late 1960s.

 

So, from 1983 to 1985, Parr made frequent trips to New Brighton, producing the work that defined his career and which we can enjoy in this book. The summers of both 1983 and 1984 were unusually hot, so New Brighton drew unusually large crowds on weekends and bank holidays, ensuring that the resort was bursting at the seams and therefore at its liveliest. And inevitably, at its tackiest, strewn with litter and under severe pressure from the hungry hordes looking to feed and amuse their kids. This was food and drink to Parr.

 

When The Last Resort appeared in 1986, and the pictures exhibited at London's Serpentine Gallery in August of that year, the critical reactions were extreme. I want to examine them briefly, because they not only reveal something about Martin Parr, but also the parochial nature both of British photography and British society at that time - something that he was challenging whether he knew it fully or not. After all, Parr was only making photographs. The Last Resort, as Val Williams rightly notes, was basically 'an exercise in looking! For example, art critic David Lee's review, which, although it acknowledged the work's poetry, berated Parr for taking (as a middle class photographer) a patronising view of the working class:

 

'(Parr) has habitually discovered visitors at their worst greedily eating and drinking junk food and discarding containers and wrappers with an abandon likely to send a liberal conscience into paroxysms of sanctimony. Our historic working class, normally dealt with generously by documentary photographers, becomes a sitting duck for a more sophisticated audience. They appear fat, simple, styleless, tediously conformist and unable to assert any individual identity. They wear cheap flashy clothes and in true conservative fashion are resigned to their meagre lot. Only babies and children sunive ridicule and it is their inclusion in many pictures which gives Parr's acerbic vision of hopelessness its poetic touch'

 

Robert Morris's reaction to the work in The British Journal of Photography ran along similar lines.

 

'This is a clammy, claustrophobic nightmare world where people lie knee-deep in chip papers, Swim in polluted black pools, and stare at a bleak horizon of urban dereliction'.

 

What were the reasons for this extreme criticism? I failed then to see it in the work, which to my mind was as affec tionate and as tender as it was acerbic. It certainly was sharp - but what is required of photographers if not to have a sharp and penetrating vision? I must say that I was amazed at some of the more vituperative comments, and wondered if these critics were not simply looking at the pictures and seeing their own class prejudices reflected there. Certainly, they did not seem to be looking at the same photographs as me.

 

'Urban dereliction'? To be sure, like many English resorts, from the 1960s onwards, New Brighton had suffered economically from the introduction of cheap package holidays to Europe, a process that impacted upon new investment in the town. However, business in British seaside towns had always been somewhat precarious, and small resorts had been subject to a slow process of decline since the 1920s. A certain air of seediness, of faded façades in need of a lick of paint, and the feeling that things are temporary, has always been a feature of the seaside, even in successful towns like old Brighton. But New Brighton's Lido - the outdoor swimming pool where quite a number of the book's images were taken - looks in reasonable, if not top-notch repair, and only the second picture in the book, of a cracked pane in a seafront shelter, says anything of dereliction. The rest is litter, the inevitable result of so many people cramming into the place in one day, and something which would be cleared up on the Tuesday following the Bank Holiday Monday.

 

Visitors at their worst'? Parr is photographing a crowded holiday resort, for goodness' sake. Benidorm, or Coney Island, would be little different. Ordinary people, out to have a good time, but cheek by jowl with other ordinary people. There is no outright misery depicted here, indeed we see a deal of affection between people, especially by adults towards children. Only in two images of people huddled in deck chairs in the rain do we see a certain glumness, but these are in the great tradition of British seaside iconography, as is the handkerchief as an impromptu sunhat - something Parr spares us here.

 

In fact, this general air of making do and parking yourself wherever you can is, I think, one of the book's essential themes, if not the primary theme - the English endeavouring to 'calm down and carry on', cheerfully making the best of conditions that are not ideal, and displaying an almost wartime stoicism in the face of what seem like insurmountable odds.

 

Consider, for example, the beautiful redhead who turns to look at Parr's camera with a feeling of annoyance at the photographer's interruption, before turning back to face the children desperate for the ice-creams she is selling. Or the touching topless sunbather, face down - not on the beach - but on a concrete ramp in the shadow of an earth excavator. One cannot help but smile, not at her but at the situation and her fortitude, and the beauty of Parr's observation. As I look at these images and write these words, we have just had a Spring bank holiday. Only yesterday, as I ate my fish 'n chips at a beachside café in Dunwich, Suffolk, the engagingly scruffy world of The Last Resort unfurled itself in front of me, hardly changed - and both the sharpness and fondness of Martin Parr's vision was vividly recreated, right before my eyes.

 

However, the critical tide against the book has turned dramatically. In October 2008, The Last Resort work was chosen as one of '1000 Artworks to See Before You Die in The Guardian newspaper, and Elisabeth Mahoney's view of that choice now seems to be the one that (rightly) has prevailed

 

'At the time, Martin Parr's series of photographs from New Brighton, a dilapidated seaside spot on the Wirral, were seen as condescending. But now they look humor- ously engaged and fond, bringing British working-class nooks and crannies into view, and reminding us how unusual that was land is) in art photography'.

 

And, as Val Williams observed

 

'So what was it about The Last Resort that so terrified and disgusted the people who wrote about it? There is some litter, admittedly but it's never knee deep, and there are some fat people, but they're not gargantuan and they're not in the majority. There are crews of babies who seem to be having a good time, eating, drinking, even smiling, and a lot of very pretty women taking part in beauty competitions, dancing, sunbathing, talking to other women. There are families who may well be suffering under Thatcherism, but they're still managing to have a good day out'

 

Mahoney and Williams, of course, have the benefit of hindsight, but even at the time of its making, the affectionate side of Parr's vision should have been apparent. If not immediately, at least by the time his next project appeared, a commission for the DPA -The Documentary Photography Archive - based at Manchester Polytechnic. Shot in Salford and entitled Point of Sale, it was exhibited in Manchester in 1986, the same year The Last Resort was shown at the Serpentine Gallery in London.

 

Only when both are considered together, I think, can a more rounded picture be taken of the initial construction of what we now know as "Parrworld". If The Last Resort demonstrates one of the major leitmotifs in his colour oeuvre - leisure - the Salford work concentrates upon the other - consumerism. Both series contribute equally, aesthetically and rhetorically, to his vision. Both are classic Parr, tableaux of everyday life fixed in a particular way, the colour playing a crucial part, though paradoxically, they are not about colour. They are, thanks to the Plaubel, sharply etched, ironic in tone, yet not without warmth - far more than might seem at first glance. They reflect a particular zeitgeist, the Thatcher years certainly, but specifically an era of industrial decline that had begun some time before Thatcher. Manufacturing and heavy industry almost disappeared. Leisure and con- sumerism became of increasing importance to many sections of British society - paradoxically perhaps all the more so to those who had neither much leisure time nor the means to avariciously consume.

 

This was one aspect of a society driven by monetarism At the same time, Martin Parr's great friend, Chris Klip, was photographing another aspect of the dog-eat-dog attitudes engendered by the Iron Lady's radical conservatism - the marginalised underclass created when the North of England in particular seemed deliberately targeted by Thatcher's anti-union policies. But Parr. it should be noted, always tackled the centre rather than the margins, which is why these two key visions of working class life of the 1970s and 1980s are so different.

 

If commentators of the time had paid more attention to Point of Sale considered in relation to The Last Resort, some of the more extreme reactions to the latter might have been avoided. Point of Sale indeed features the ferocious, fast-food, hypermarket kind of consumerism that critics latched on to in The Last Resort, but it also reveals an affectionate regard, and a regret for the demise of a traditional way of life and a traditional way of doing business. This becomes clear in the fascinating diary Parr kept of the progress of his Salford work, and it is a great pity that he didn't do the same for New Brighton.

 

This regret is also there in The Last Resort if you look hard enough. Indeed, you simply have to look. The books opening image, of a perhaps resigned, yet dignified elderly couple in a tearoom - it has to be a tearoom, not a newfangled kind of café - immediately declares Parr's concern for a way of life that is changing and under threat. It has a perfect counterpart in the picture of two women in a Salford hairdresser's, a key image in Point of Sale. There certainly are ironies in the Parr of this period - one of the biggest might be the fact that it was a selfstyled grocer's daughter who threatened the small British businesses Parr lovingly documents, replacing them with the large-scale, anonymous capitalism for which he reserves his more acerbic observations

 

It's not too far fetched, I believe, to discern a similar kind of attitude to that seen in Walker Evans' great book, American Photographs (1938), Evans celebrated the rough-hewn, individualistic qualities of folk architecture over the slick structures of big business. Parr, in both Point of Sale and The Last Resort, is celebrating the rough-hewn eccentricities and foibles of the tradi- tional British working classes at a time when a faceless corporatism was changing their shopping and leisure habits. And like the dry-eyed Evans, Parr does so without a hint of nostalgia and with more than a hint of ironic detachment.

 

Another of Parr's favourite photobooks is by two Por- tuguese photographers, Victor Palla and Costa Martins. Lisboa, cidade triste e alegre (Lisbon, City of Sadness and Joy), published in 1959, documented an essentially working class city where both moods - regret and delight - are depicted in equal measure. Parr's title, The Last Resort, with its double-edged meaning, also indicates a book with a dual aspect similar to that of Lisboa - although he did not know the Portuguese book until after he made the work.

 

It might not exactly be in the traditional Picture Post mould, but The Last Resort is first and foremost an homage to the English seaside resort, and to the working class families who have traditionally patronised them. In fact, it is probably closer to the Picture Post tradition than might be perceived at first glance, for on balance affection outweighs sourness by some way. Importantly for British and European photography, the book presents Martin Parr discovering both a persuasively contemporary mode of photography and a way of looking at the world that is clinically detached, sceptical to a degree, sharply humorous, yet humanistically engaged

 

GERRY BADGER