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First publication 2023
Text Copyright © Gareth Williams
Photographs Copyright © Gareth Williams
Postcard Image Copyright © John Hind
Cover Design - Gareth Williams
Graphics and layout - Gareth Williams
Gareth Williams
When The Fun Fizzles, by Gareth Williams, is a culminationary documentary approach that includes found images, my own photography and abstracts from historic postcards. My work focuses around Barry Island and how once you peel back the surface layer of seaside romanticism and charm, we are greeted with its unsettling darker side at times imbued with an oppressive intimacy. The imagery takes you on a personal and social journey of my personal feelings.
The seaside is a quintessential British place to go, and growing up as a young child, like many other families, my parents would gravitate to the seaside to make memories and relax by the sea. Seaside locations such as Barry Island pepper the British coastline and these small seaside towns have always been a metaphor for the state of the nation. 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 seaside towns are changing and growing old.
My redundant 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.
Nostalgia cements lifelong feelings, and as a child my eyes only saw the world with rose tinted vision. Looking back to those childhood family memories I’m filled with a tenderness and longing of those magnificent day trips where, like many children, all I saw were bright lights, loud arcades and the aroma of chips, candyfloss and the scent of the sea air that would
awaken my senses. At times the promise of fun there was fulfilled, but looking back analytically, as an adult, it was denied.
The grandeur of Barry Island has faded. Eyes now opened, I see what’s really there. Barry Island has become blanched. The pedestal is now tarnished and tired, showing that the seaside can be a place of privilege but also great poverty.
The images that make this monograph are shot using either natural available ambient light or artificial light from buildings exteriors that cascade and illuminate the space. Laced through this collection of work are John Hind postcards from Barry Island, that once sold the dream of fun times and a place you wanted to visit. They offer the viewer a taste of a bygone era when Barry Island thrived, an era from both my childhood and before.
Through careful visual methodology, juxtaposing of imagery and careful pairings, I seek to accomplish an honest representation of Barry Island’s darker, more shabby side that’s generally overlooked, like I did as a child. The imagery within this book has been accomplished by visiting the space on numerous occasions over multiple seasons. These images provide an antidote to the easy assumptions about the great British seaside.