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Our True Intent Is All For Your Delight.
Photographs by John Hinde Butlin. Text by Martin Parr.
Chris Boot,
London,
2003.
128 pp.,
56 color illustrations,
12x9¾".
The immediate reaction to these campy photographs in dripping color is almost always the questioning exclamation, "Are these by Martin Parr?" The answer is “no”, but closer to “yes” than one realizes. Butlin’s Holiday Camps were begun in 1936 in the seaside town of Skegness; these photographs, made for promotional postcards, were staged by the John Hinde Studio, which included three young photographers, Elmar Ludwig, Edmund Nägele, and David Noble. A young Martin Parr worked two summers at a Butlin's resort, first as a b&w and then as a color “walkie” photographer. Of the postcards, Parr states, "The impact they had on me in 1971 was intense and they have haunted me ever since...the most remarkable thing of all is that the cards were painstakingly produced...as humble postcards to sell for a few pence to holidaymakers."
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