Synopsis
For two years British photographer Anna Fox documented holidayculture at the iconic Butlin s resort in the seaside town of BognorRegis, West Sussex. This new book, Resort 2, is the second part of theResort project. Resort 1, published in the fall of 2013, looked at Family Breaks at this renowned holiday camp, providing a uniqueinsight into contemporary British leisure culture. Resort 2 observes avery different kind of holiday, the themed adult breaks, taking placeabout once every six weeks inside this very British setting. Butlin s,famed for its family holidays since its creation in the mid-1930 s,needed to rework its branding from the 1970 s onwards. Cheappackage holidays started to draw families away from this popularresort and several of the camps closed down.Having attracted tens of millions of holidaymakers since its creationin 1936, the popularity of Butlin s was at stake and after therebranding of the Family Breaks came a new invention the Adultonly Themed Weekends . Steeped in a carnival atmosphere, theseraucous weekends bring out a range of fantastic characters fromgroups of imitation pop icons such as Amy Winehouse and Elvis togangs of male fairies. With various titles such as Back to the 60 s or 90 s Re-loaded and the marvellous Hot Summer Party , theseweekends attract thousands of work-worn adults ready to try outexotic fancy dress and party hard for two days and three nights.Shot using both medium- and large-format, Fox s deeply saturatedcolour photographs provide a fascinating insight into a previouslyunseen side of holiday camp culture.Resort 2 includes 40 photographs from the series, with an essay byDavid Chandler.
About the Author
Born in 1961 and completing her degree in Audiovisual studies at The Surrey Institute, Farnham in 1986, Anna Fox has been working in photography and video for over twenty years. Influenced by the British documentary tradition and US ‘New Colourists’, her first work Workstations (published by and exhibited first at Camerawork, London 1988) observed, with a critical eye, London office culture in the mid-Thatcher years. Her later work documenting weekend wargames, Friendly Fire, was exhibited in the exhibition Warworks at the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Netherlands Foto Institute and the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. Her solo shows have been seen at The Photographer’s Gallery, London and The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, and her work has been included in numerous international group shows – Through the Looking Glass, Centre of the Creative Universe: Liverpool and the Avant-garde, and How We Are: Photographing Britain, amongst others. Anna Fox is Professor of Photography at the University for the Creative Arts at Farnham, UK. Schilt
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