The Last Resort: Photographs of New Brighton

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It’s a classic of quirky design, with all sorts of pastel-coloured doodads scattered across the pages. It is a deliberate clash of the old world and the new, their values opposed, and we are left in no doubt that one will cancel out the other – demolish it, in fact, with ‘ordinary’ people stranded uncertainly in the path of this inevitable collision.

While showing familiar events and activities, the 20 works from this commission reveal an amazing diversity of people who are adapting the traditional seaside experience to fit their own social, cultural and religious needs. Stacks of cones sit on a table beside her, complete with syrupy stains from previous hurried transactions. In 2013, the much anticipated Media Space opened at the Science Museum in London with an exhibition devoted to the work of Ray-Jones along with early black-and-white photographs from Parr's Non-Conformist series.A typical review of Last Resort stated that he found people “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. The photographs are part of a series of forty entitled The Last Resort, in which Parr captured sunbathers, fun seekers and diners at New Brighton, the Liverpool beach resort. There is perhaps nothing quite so English – or British, if the distinction is still meaningful – as a day at the seaside. Martin Parr is one of the world’s most iconic photographers, his ability to capture the essence of Britishness unparallelled within contemporary image-making. My first was on the Fun Fair, alternating between the ‘one in the jar for a budgerigar’ stall and the ‘roll a penny’ stall.

This 2008 edition of the book (originally published by Promenade Press in 1986) presents the original images alongside a new essay by Gerry Badger, examining how perception of this important piece of photography has changed over the decades since original publication. Parr was also influenced heavily to switch to color photographs by the works of other American photographers such as Joel Meyerowitz and William Eggleston. The contradictions of British life are everywhere to be seen – the beach is no different,” says Parr. Colour photograph of three blonde women, wearing swimming costumes and high heels, and holding rosettes, lining up to emerge from a white tunnel.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. I’m also interested in making the photographs work on another level, showing how British society is decaying; how this once great society is falling apart’ (quoted in Williams, p. The photographs comprising The Last Resort were taken between 1983 and 1985, a period of economic decline in northwest England.