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Reviews: Welcome to Britain
Welcome to Britain |
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A Celebration of Real Life
Social realism in British photography - the urge to catch us as we really are - has a long tradition. Each generation has sent out observers to record the parts of our society - the wildernesses of material poverty - that the comfortable classes have tended to ignore. This school has been so active, however, you might well think every nook and cranny had now been explored. The 30s and 40s were especially active, a time when the mean streets and the lean faces were portrayed as an age of grime by the likes of Bill Brandt, the Mass Observation team and Bert Hardy. A similar school arose at Hebden Bridge in the 70s, which included Martin Parr. But as times were getting softer, the poorer British were able to express themselves and Parr himself was to become more interested in kitsch than grime.
The locus of this bright book by Jan Williams and Chris Teasdale lies not far from Martin Parr territory, but there are significant differences. Parr belongs to a tradition of diligent yet squeamish bourgeois observers, middle-class explorers who tracked down the alien class culture with a mix of fascination and horror. In literature one thinks of Orwell in London, Paris or Wigan, or Robert Tressell with his ragged-trousered philanthropists in Hastings, not to mention Dickens. It is indeed the squeamishness which gives their work power.
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By contrast, Jan Williams and Chris Teasdale for the past five years have chosen to be part of the world they portray. 'Armed with a camera and caravan, they tirelessly travel' around their Britain, driving, living, recording and exhibiting wherever they pitch up. They are edgy but with no side. The result is not so much grime or grunge or cringe, but more chuckle and cackle. The bright tones, the full-on camera work and their eye for comic banality yield images which are compellingly cheerful. One even feels - in the images of abandoned sleepers on park benches in municipal spaces - a sense of triumphant and lackadaisical tolerance.
This book of perhaps 400 images on 160 A5ish pages is usefully divided into 40 or more mini-themes, each giving a familiar but often ignored trait of British outdoor life - dead conifers, cinemas used as churches, defaced signs, smut, graffitti and so on. Interspersed are comments culled from the public's responses to a quirky questionnaire pressed upon visitors to their mustard-coloured two-wheel caravan (called Bobble) where the exhibitions are held. Example - Q:How do you feel about pigeons? A: I worry where their babies go. Sometimes they have arranged four images into a a single 'alternative' postcard (for example, four images of sprawling sleepers on the grass bear the legend 'Relaxing Southsea'). This is a delightful book, a Britain without style but without malice. Buy it, smile over it, and ask yourself 'How real is it for you?' Great value at £9.99, the book is published by Headline. The Caravan Gallery can be contacted on www.thecaravangallery.co.uk. David Jay
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