Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The John Hinde Butlin's photographs are a glorious moment in the story of British photography. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the John Hinde Studio, based in Dublin, produced a series of postcards to be sold at Butlin's holiday camps throughout the British Isles. Famous for their hi-de-hi catchphrase, redcoat hosts, and bargain packages with all entertainment included, this was Butlin's heyday. Throughout the 1970s, over a million Britons had a holiday at Butlin's each year. With innovative use of colour and elaborate staging (the trademarks of a John Hinde postcard), it was the challenging job of two German (Elmar Ludwig and Edmund N#65533;gele) and one British photographer (David Noble) to execute the photographs to Hinde's rigorous formula and standards. Each photograph is elaborately stage managed, with often large casts of real holidaymakers acting their allocated roles in these narrative tableaux of the Butlin's quiet lounges, ballrooms and Beachomber bars. Shot with large format cameras, and lit like a film set, the production of these photographs were an extraordinary undertaking. The images helped John Hinde become one of the most successful postcard publishers in the world. Most of the John Hinde Butlin's photographs have only ever been published as postcards. The book and exhibition photographs are reproduced from the original large format Ektachromes. They prove to be some of the strongest images of their era.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

For more than 45 years, British working-class families on holiday enjoyed the affordable leisure tradition of Butlin's Holiday Camps. As a photographic portrait of post-World War II British life, this book features color images that first appeared as vacation postcards from these resorts. The book's title, taken from the photo of a glowing neon sign, aptly conveys the Butlin's philosophy. The photographs in the book, made by the John Hinde Studio in Dublin to be sold at the camps, are virtual time capsules of three decades. Hinde was a color photography pioneer, but what is most interesting about these Technicolor images is not the elaborate staging or the theatrical lighting but the fact that these ballrooms and lounges are filled with "real" people, not models. This book is the first to compile and reproduce the Hinde Studio images. Essays by photographers who worked for Hinde give insight into his methods, and the lucid introduction by contemporary photographer Martin Parr explains why these humble postcards are important, both historically and theoretically. Recommended for art photography collections in large public and academic libraries.-Shauna Frischkorn, Millersville Univ., PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

John Hinde (see subtitle) was a commercial photographer who specialized in color images for postcards. The Butlin of the subtitle was Billy Butlin, who had a chain of "holiday centres" in Britain that were intended to provide "the jollity and comradeship of a camping holiday, plus all the amenities of a first-class hotel" to ordinary British families. (The book's title--a line of Shakespeare's--was Butlin's business slogan.) Elmar Ludwig, Edmund Nagele, and David Noble were photographers whom Hinde assigned to capture the function rooms, playgrounds, and concessions of Butlin's centers in use by actual customers. Here, 55 of the resulting brilliant, evenly lighted frames are mounted on footwide pages, and their artistic and historical merits are maximized. They show the leisure of mainstream Britons in the centers' heyday, the "swinging" '60s and '70s, resplendently; and their technical brio is the prime topic of Martin Parr's introduction and the three photographers' appended testimonies. Anglophiles and photography buffs should rejoice in the book, but the crowded-room fascination of the pictures should enthrall plenty of nonspecialists, too. --Ray Olson