[HN Gopher] 'Too negative ': Welsh seaside images (1979)
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'Too negative ': Welsh seaside images (1979)
Author : bloat
Score : 36 points
Date : 2021-01-19 10:52 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| dash2 wrote:
| I wonder how they'd feel about this Goldie Looking Chain joint,
| then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvuxYxmlfrc
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| Rhyl Pavilion 1870:
|
| https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/260064
|
| Seaside 1950:
|
| https://gohomeonapostcard.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/wp-319...
|
| The piers stood as major tourist attractions for (more than a
| century?):
|
| https://www.cheshirelife.co.uk/out-about/places/the-piers-of...
|
| Edit: Many postcards of the piers:
|
| http://www.simplonpc.co.uk/Wales-Piers.html
| gorgoiler wrote:
| The sense of "something has changed here?" is so deep in places
| like this. They are populated still but the architecture points
| clearly to a time when there was so much more going on in the
| area.
|
| All around the UK there are spa towns and resorts that were
| clearly bustling with wealth (community and personal) a century
| ago, but have now slumped in popularity.
|
| A town like Malvern for example. It was the _height_ of Edwardian
| (I think that's the right era) sophistication. A must visit
| tourist destination for the middle classes. All that really
| remains anymore of the town's prestige are the schools and the
| immovable hills. You see some spa infrastructure still but a lot
| of it is derelict.
|
| I was in Llanthony valley a few summers ago and took a really
| interesting guided tour through some local unpaved roads. Our
| guide, Henry was born in the village in 1930. He showed us the
| sites of two former pubs, now completely gone except for some
| York stones on the threshold. They'd drink there, or walk an hour
| across the valley to the pubs on the other side when they felt
| like it. We looked through the old school that taught 15 children
| of local families. It's now just another big house with two cars
| parked outside.
|
| The big house up the top had a squire who rented land to Henry
| and his father where they grew valuable soft fruit crops for sale
| in the local market towns. The village had other services: a shop
| and a farrier.
|
| All gone. The fruit plots are now overtaken with ash and briar.
| People still lived in all of the houses, but they were now the
| country homes of people who worked in the big local towns, or
| London, or had just retired to the area. I don't begrudge them
| for that, and it was surely a much poorer life back in the 1950s,
| but it was also a much more of a _local_ one and that felt like
| it had a lot of value. It also felt like the people were all
| there but they just didn't know each other any more. Or they did,
| but they didn't work together, so it was a dormitory suburb
| albeit in the heart of a Welsh valley. _No one worked there._
|
| It felt quite melancholic. The big towns took so much away from
| the second cities, villages, and countryside. When you can find
| British communities that still thrive away from the major cities
| it is _magical_.
|
| https://www.malvernremembers.org.uk/wp-content/gallery/great...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cwmyoy
|
| http://thirdeyetraveller.com/st-martins-church-cwmyoy-crooke...
|
| ...and here's another great link:
|
| https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-tenbury-wells-spa-...
| feralimal wrote:
| "When you can find British communities that still thrive away
| from the major cities it is magical"
|
| Where's that, do you think?
| reedf1 wrote:
| I feel like anywhere else in the world North Wales would be taken
| much more advantage of. It's a stunningly beautiful place, maybe
| one of the most beautiful in the world, but it is massively
| impoverished and undervisited and it is hard to understand why.
| richjdsmith wrote:
| I visited a couple years back. Did a week long drive through
| wales. It was absolutely gorgeous.
|
| I've been lucky enough to have been on a few holidays in both
| Scotland and Ireland for a few weeks at a time (I'm Canadian,
| but I lived in England for a just under a year). I found the
| people in Whales to be considerably less friendly than anywhere
| else in the British isles. To a point where I walked into a pub
| in a small town and people switched from speaking English to
| Welsh. I plan to return to Ireland and Scotland, but based on
| my experience with the Welsh, have no real desire to revisit
| Wales.
| ficklepickle wrote:
| They don't really want visitors. They are quite upset that they
| have been covered in London newspapers in recent years.
|
| They're perfectly (un)happy just being weird and Welsh.
|
| I've spent a lot of time there and by best friend lives there.
| navaati wrote:
| Are you referring to the mountains in the south-west direction
| from Liverpool ? Lovely place, a true Voyage going there.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| Going to the Irish Atlantic Coast with my family made me want
| to visit Wales. I studied in Swansea in 2005, and took one trip
| up to North Wales. The Wild Atlantic Way in Ireland is
| extremely tourist friendly, and it would have been interesting
| to contrast it with Wales. From my memory, it's sparser, less
| catered to visitors, and more rugged and dramatic.
| mc32 wrote:
| Tourism is a blessing and a curse. If you're contact with your
| way of life, you'll probably prefer the status quo over change
| that causes "gentrification" and other maladies of progress.
| kinlan wrote:
| Im from Liverpool, live in Chester and love North Wales. I
| encourage everyone to visit this amazingly beautiful part of
| world.
|
| I actually rather liked these images because there's a certain
| grit to it that is still sometimes present.
| ficklepickle wrote:
| My best mate lives in Llanberis, right next to the Snowdon
| railroad and the waterfall. His drinking water comes from a
| pipe upstream.
|
| It can be incredibly beautiful there. I've been many times. It
| can also be very bleak. Still, it will always hold a fond place
| in my heart.
|
| I haven't made it over from Canada in a couple of years, but
| I'm sure I'll be back some day.
| mc32 wrote:
| This remind me of Killip: https://time.com/4185463/chris-killip-
| martin-parr-in-flagran... (there's a slider to view the rest of
| the photos)
|
| These are on the other side of the country though. But same
| 'atmosphere' more or less. Kind of a photographic counterpart to
| and reminiscent of 'Post War Dream'
| Rendello wrote:
| > The project arose when the Mostyn Gallery in Llandudno was due
| to reopen in 1979 after decades of closure. Its director
| commissioned a photographic project from Bennett, with the
| intention of capturing the atmosphere of North Wales coastal
| resorts in winter
|
| > With a working title of Anatomy of Melancholy, an exhibition
| was scheduled soon after the gallery's refurbishment and
| reopening. Bennett's project was ultimately deemed likely to
| cause funding problems by showing the region's resorts in too
| negative a light
|
| I had to laugh at "Anatomy of Melancholy". I'm not sure what the
| gallery was expecting, but I can see why they might've been
| apprehensive about showing these off in their freshly-opened
| local attraction!
| flarg wrote:
| I grew up in a nearby English seaside town around the time the
| photographs were taken and as a child I was taken to the places
| in the photos by my family. These were once bustling places full
| of holidaying industrial workers but as the UK's industrial base
| declined so did these resorts; better service and weather was
| available overseas for not much more in terms of real cost. My
| hometown is now a standard English costal town, renovated 50
| years too late by private developers to whom the local
| authorities have sold or leased land at rock bottom prices, a
| heady mix of drug addicts, tracksuited iPhone Facebook addicts
| and old dears struggling with their trolley bags. Still a lovely
| place to be when the weather is fine, but basically, purgatory.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Morrissey's 'Everyday is Like Sunday' makes more sense after
| seeing the photographs.
| walshemj wrote:
| Well shoot it in B&W and style them deliberately you can make
| any place look like a dump.
|
| I went to Barmouth (one of the towns mentioned) as a kid and it
| was great.
| Lio wrote:
| I find Martin Parr's Last Resort more controversial and
| they're in colour. It really moved me as a kid when I first
| saw it.
|
| Both are great in my opinion. I don't care what Morrissey
| thinks, I love the British seaside.
|
| These photos make me think of Malcolm Pryce's surreal Welsh
| noir books. I know they're set in a different part of Wales
| but North Wales is definitely on my list of places to visit.
| dash2 wrote:
| I was going to mention Martin Parr. His website
| (https://www.martinparr.com/) has a selection of his work.
| ars wrote:
| I agree, there's something about B&W that makes anyplace look
| drab and rundown. I think it's because dirt is usually grey,
| so all the walls and items just look dirty.
|
| It sometimes works for landscapes - especially at night. But
| for people it, unfortunately, makes them look like they're
| not alive anymore.
|
| If you've ever seen someone who passed away, they somewhat
| look like a B&W photo of themselves.
| leg100 wrote:
| Humanity has gone to hell in a handcart since then. So we marvel
| over such pics from the past: the nostalgia, the simplicity, how
| natural people are with themselves and each other, that we now
| consider them wonderful glimpses of a bygone age, myself
| included. But life is and always was a struggle, and I don't
| blame people at time considering the images too negative. They
| wanted something better and things were getting better, for a
| brief time. They had the future to look forward to. No more.
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