Resort 2: Butlin's Bognor Regis

For two years British photographer Anna Fox documented holiday culture at the iconic Butlin’s resort in the seaside town of Bognor Regis, West Sussex. This new book, Resort 2, is the second part of the Resort project. Resort 1, published in the fall of 2013, looked at “Family Breaks” at this renowned holiday camp, providing a unique insight into contemporary British leisure culture. Resort 2 observes a very different kind of holiday, the themed adult breaks, taking place about once every six weeks inside this very British setting. Butlin’s, famed for its family holidays since its creation in the mid-1930’s, needed to rework its branding from the 1970’s onwards. Cheap package holidays started to draw families away from this popular resort and several of the camps closed down. Having attracted tens of millions of holidaymakers since its creation in 1936, the popularity of Butlin’s was at stake and after the rebranding of the “Family Breaks” came a new invention – the “Adult only Themed Weekends”. Steeped in a carnival atmosphere, these raucous weekends bring out a range of fantastic characters from groups of imitation pop icons such as Amy Winehouse and Elvis to gangs of male fairies. With various titles such as “Back to the 60’s” or “90’s Re-loaded” and the marvellous “Hot Summer Party”, these weekends attract thousands of work-worn adults ready to try out exotic fancy dress and party hard for two days and three nights. Shot using both medium- and large-format, Fox’s deeply saturated colour photographs provide a fascinating insight into a previously unseen side of holiday camp culture. Resort 2 includes 40 photographs from the series, with an essay by David Chandler.