'Seaside: Photographed' at Turner Contemporary in Margate

'Seaside: Photographed' at Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate is a fine exhibition that seeks to 'examine the relationship between photographers, photography and the British seaside from the 1850s to the present'.

One of the aspects I appreciated was the sense of continuity alongside change over time in popular coastal locations. Bill Brandt's 1935  'Brighton Belle  (I'm no angel)' - actually his Danish sister in law Esther Brandt- could just have easily walked out of the one of the 1990s Brighton raves featured elsewhere in the exhibition. Meanwhile Lee Miller photographs surrealist artist Eileen Agar at Brighton Pavilion and on the pier in the 1940s.

The photographs of English holiday camps, including Butlins, are very evocative though as a sometime holiday camper I  felt ambivalent about their display - was the artist/photographer engaged in celebration or condescension of working class life? 

My favourite section, entitled Undercurrents, explored the subcultural use of the seaside. The caption observes;  'The seaside offers romance and longing and the excitement of being part of a crowd. From the Mods of the 1960s gathering on the beaches of the south coast, to the young alternative travellers of the 1990s, time at the seaside was time out of the normal. The seaside is alive with sounds and visions, parades and costumes – nothing is quite as it seems. For many young people the beach and its environs is one of the few free spaces in a country where communal outdoor space is either disappearing or is rigidly monitored, and much of the rural landscape is privately owned. The use of out of season hotels and holiday camps by promoters of music, dance and fetish weekenders, provides large communal meeting places for those whose interests exists outside of the mainstream. Decayed resorts are seen as marginalised and tolerant, a little out of the real world'.

Featured work includes Vinca Petersen's image of a free party at Dungeness in 1993:

Enzo Ragazzini's documentation of the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival:

... and Stuart Griffiths' pictures of  'illegal raves at Black Rock and Ovendean' near Brighton in 1994. Griffiths, then a young ex-paratrooper fresh from tours of Northern Ireland, 'became unofficial photographer for the Church of SubGenius' some of whose associates were involved in putting on the parties - you can see some 'Bob' posters on the wall: 

There was plenty more seaside life to be photographed in Margate at the weekend (3/4 August 2019), with music all over town for the town's carnival and the Margate Soul Festival and with the streets full of soul boys and girls of a certain vintage. At the Lighthouse Bar on the Harbour people were chilling in the afternoon sunshine to 'The Creator has a Masterplan' (Souljazz Orchestra version).  My photograph below not included in exhibition!

Exhibition closes 8 September 2019

Motorway Madness: 'ravers take over motorway services' (i-D, 1991)

Great article from i-D magazine, no. 91, April 1991 about post-club gatherings at Motorway service stations (click on images to enlarge):

'3 AM, Saturday morning. The M6 is windy, wet and desolate. Its service stations offer comfort only to lorry drivers and sleepy executives. For many weeks, however, selected services have paid host to the coffee and communal smoke of hundreds of ravers' post club comedown. After the semi legendary Blackburn parties, police continually harassed the convoys criss-crossing Lancashire and beyond. Although parties such as Revenge provided a brief replacement, the next best thing was driving long distance to a club and afterwards passing a few hours chilling at a service station. A network of clubs around the Midlands and Northwest, such as Legends in Warrington, Quadrant Park in Liverpool and Oz in Blackpool now provide the excitement and camaraderie of the raves of 1989 and 1990. Each club generates its own Service station mayhem; favourites including Burtonwood (M62), Charnock Richard (M6) and Anderton (M61).

The usual M6 choice, Knutsford (with its commanding views of all six lanes from the cafe) has tonight been cordoned off by the police (the “dibble“) and so the hordes head south to Sandbach. Most are returning from Shelley’s Laserdome in Stoke. As the cafeteria fills up and the ghetto blasters rev up, the staff and the casual callers look bewildered, probably by the size of the bubble jackets as much as the weight of numbers.

In the jungle humidity of the clubs, the ubiquitous baggy T-shirt is the only garment which prevents fainting, but in the chillier atmosphere of the services, mountaineering gear and sportswear reign. The clothes are from Chipie, Gio Goi, Soviet and still Joe Bloggs; favourite jackets and thick, fleecy tops come from Tog 24 and Berghaus. The bobble hat, once the preserve of train spotters, is now sported  with pride and appears in a vast range of bobbles, colours and ear-flaps...

A similar situation goes off on Sunday morning at Charnock Richard. 300 cars, each full, descend on the service area. This has been happening since the north-west after hours raves diminished last autumn. However by Christmas the management and police got wise to the game and started shutting the coffee bar, leaving the car park as the congregation area...'

'Phoebe 16, music journalist from Derby, clothes from Stussy and Guy's in Derby. Maddest thing you've ever done? 'Had the best night of my life at Shelleys and then got stuck in Stoke'