Our True Intent is all for Your Delight: The John Hinde Butlin's Photographs - Hardcover

John Hinde; Martin Parr

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0954281306 ISBN 13: 9780954281304

Publisher: Chris Boot, 2005

Synopsis

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, postcard entrepreneur John Hinde produced a series of images of Butlin's popular holiday camps throughout the British Isles. With his trademark use of bright colors and elaborate staging, each photograph featured a large cast of real holidaymakers. These narrative tableaux of Butlin's quiet lounges, ballrooms and bars were rescued from obscurity by dedicated Hinde fan Martin Parr (who introduces the book). Both grand and humble, they are now regarded as some of the strongest images of their era.
John Hinde (1916-1998) was an important pioneer of color photography in Britain. Author of several early color photography books, he was diverted into circus management before founding the traveling John Hinde Show. It failed, and he returned to photography in 1955, conceiving a new kind of postcard--brighter and better than anything produced before. He became the most successful postcard publisher in the world, although critical acclaim only began in 1993 with a retrospective exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Hinde's Butlin's photographs have now been exhibited throughout Europe and America.

About this title

Review:

"Stunningly up-to-the-minute large-format photographs filled with fond ironies...The post card photographers capture the sort of bright, color-saturated period detail you might expect...by turns achingly sincere and unwittingly goofy."
The New Yorker (May 19,2003)

"Just look at the candy-bright hues in John Hinde's delicious collection of vintage postcards of Butlin's...best of all is the romance of the ballroom pictures. Are you dancing? We are."

'Hot Books' Elle

"Long viewed only as a master of kitsch Hinde is now recognised, albeit posthumously, as a peerless social documentarian. Dazzling in their their colour intensity and strange clarity.... Visionary, Wonderful."
Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, London

"Extraordinary...the combination of aesthetics and promotion produced something that bypasses documentary and approaches an arresting British surrealism."
David Jays, Financial Times

"These phenomenal photographs...a cacophony of colour...Despite and because of their artifice, John Hinde's picture postcards are endlessly fascinating, exposing social trends, sartorial aberrations and a particular photographic vision. A delightful book."
The Art Book (June 2003)

"Wonderfully stylized...Check the prodigious use of Adidas three-stripe! Marvel at the tiki dicor blow-out at Butlin's Skegness Beachcomber bar! Remark on just how weird pre-Thatcherite Britain really was!"
The Face

"Enchanting and surreal"

Vogue Magazine

About the Author:

Martin Parr

A leading and influential figure in British photography, Martin Parr was born in Epsom, Surrey, in 1952. He established his reputation with the publication of photographs of New Brighton Beach, near Liverpool, The Last Resort. A jackdaw collector of postcards and books, as well as a prolific image-maker, Parr’s own recent books include the Boring Postcards series, Common Sense, Think of England and Autoportraits. His Collected Works retrospective was shown at the Barbican Art Gallery in 2002. Parr lives in Bristol and is a member of Magnum Photos.

John Hinde

A pioneer of colour photography in Britain, John Hinde was born in 1916 in Street, Somerset, the grandson of James Clark (founder of Clark’s Shoes). His career began in the early 1940s as a photographer and an innovator in colour reproduction techniques. He was among the first photographers in Britain to be published by the new colour magazines, and made photoessays for the illustrated books Of Cabbages and Kings, Citizens in War, and British Circus Life, among many others. He began the John Hinde Studio in Ireland in 1956, going on to become one of the most successful postcard publishers in the world with 50 million annual postcard sales. He sold the company in 1972 and concentrated subsequently on landscape painting. His work was recognised with a retrospective at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, in 1993. Hinde died in retirement in the Dordogne, France, in 1998.

The John Hinde Photographers:

Elmar Ludwig: Born in Halle, in East Germany in 1935, Ludwig began his apprenticeship in advertising photography, aged 16, working with studios in Munich and Cologne prior to being recruited by John Hinde in 1962. He spent a total of nine years as a postcard photographer with Hinde before establishing a successful advertising studio of his own in Munich. Now semi-retired, he mixes regular assignments for a sportswear catalogue with skiing, mountaineering and work as a hospice volunteer.

Edmund Nägele F.R.P.S.: Edmund Nägele was born in Germany. After working in an advertising studio in Munich, he joined the John Hinde Studio in 1965. He became freelance in 1972, travelling and photographing around the world before settling in Cheltenham, England, in 1982 where he has established the successful stock photography company, nagelestock.com. He was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society in 1973.

David Noble: Born in Folkestone, England, Noble’s early career included work for local commercial and portrait photographers, the Stratford-upon-Avon Herald and freelance photography for trade magazines. A developing interest in landscape photographs led him to John Hinde in 1969, for whom he made postcard photographs in East Asia, the USA, the Mediterranean as well as Ireland and Britain. After leaving John Hinde Ltd in 1988, he established a successful stock landscape and travel photography collection, David Noble Photography, which he runs with his wife Jenny in Folkestone.

About this edition

• Publisher: Chris Boot
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0954281306
• ISBN 13: 9780954281304
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 128