Daniel Meadows. Butlin's by the Sea (1972)

The Hyman Collection has an important group of 19 framed exhibition prints by Daniel Meadows representing this major foray into colour photography.

Daniel Meadows and Martin Parr had developed a close working relationship as students in Manchester and in their summer vacation of 1972, they took jobs as 'walkies' at Butlin's Holiday Camp in Filey, Yorkshire. Meadows needed money to finance his fund-raising campaign for the Free Photographic Omnibus. He and Parr had also been encouraged by Andrew Sproxton and Val Williams, who were planning to open a photography gallery in York that autumn, to produce some new work for exhibition. So, as well as doing the 'day job' for Butlin's Photographic Services, during their spare time they collaborated in recording their responses to the place.

The resulting series, Butlin's By The Sea, was produced mainly in black & white but Meadows also included some small colour prints. These he forgot about until, in 2011, Williams uncovered the original transparencies while doing research for his Early Photographic Works retrospective. She commissioned new prints, and here they are.

Meadows has explained:

I had an excitable imagination and my head was full of the many recent class satires I'd seen, or read, that were based in holiday or military camps and by the seaside: Wesker's 'Chips With Everything', Orton's 'The Erpingham Camp'. Also the movie 'They Shoot Horses Don't They?'. Fact or fiction, Butlin's had me spooked.

The Hyman Collection is grateful to Daniel Meadows for his assistance in cataloguing these pictures.

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Daniel Meadows. Butlin's by the Sea (1972)

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