When The Fun Stops

When The Fun Stops is a series of colour images based within Barry Island and how, once we see past the surface layer of seaside romanticism and charm, we are greeted with an alternative Barry Island.

My past memories of Barry Island as a child were always of a busy, sometimes loud and vibrant location on the day trips my family made there when I was a young boy. As a child Barry Island was an assult on my senses, the lights, the arcade sounds and the smell of sea air laced with the scent of chips and candyfloss intoxicated and captivated me. Now older with a family of my own I gravitate to Barry Island with my own children as the geographical generational pull of the location is formed and passed on.

The seaside is a quintessential British place to go, but as time has gone by, that grandeur has faded and Barry Island has become blanched and the pedestal that I once put Barry Island on is now tarnished and tired, showing that the seaside can be a place of great privilege but also poverty.

Through careful visual methodology I seek to accomplish an honest representation of Barry Island’s darker, more shabby side that’s generally overlooked and by shooting with a critical eye and looking past the commercialist visage, these images provide an antidote to the rose tinted assumptions about the great British seaside. As a child my eyes never saw this side, they weren’t programmed to, Barry Island could do no wrong back then.

These objectives are important as the seaside has always been a metaphor for the state of the nation and we hold a certain romantic view of the seaside that's historically been the place to retire for many on those long summer days and is a setting for a slice of national life and identity. But as a nation are we a help or a hindrance to these complex seaside locations and communities as the nation only comes when it suits us, consuming only a fraction of the year there.

Having spent multiple visits as a flaneur to the space, I’ve built up an intimate relationship to the space and every image should carry its own story as a single image as well as a complete set and show Barry Island’s unsettling side with oppressive intimacy.