Episode 3 Britain in Focus: A Photographic History

'I am Eamonn McCabe.

'In the 1970s, I cut my teeth as a sports photographer

'on local newspapers in the East End of London.

'Trying to capture the drama of events like this

'made me fall in love with photography.'

Boxing has always been my favourite sport to photograph.

The noise, the energy, the smells, the tension.

And it's a dangerous place to work, beside that ring.

Anything could happen.

'I had to follow the action so closely,

'it really sharpened my instincts.

'In the '70s, my job was all about rolls of film and darkrooms.

'But in today's digital age, the way I work is completely different.

'Now photography is instantaneous.

'During my career, there's been a revolution in photography.

'And that's what I want to explore in this programme.

'From the colour explosion of the 1960s...'

You can't simply go out and take the same picture

that you would have taken in black and white.

'..to the sensation of Instagram today.'

It's just what I do all the time.

'And it's a chance to celebrate

'some of the most influential photographers of my lifetime.

'John Bulmer, with his pioneering colour work.

'Jane Bown, who brought new depth to the celebrity portrait.

'Fay Godwin, who gave landscape a fresh, political edge.

'And Martin Parr, with his acute and satirical eye.

'Their unique visions have defined

'how we've all seen Britain in focus over the last 50 years.'

It's that idea of, you know, light from out there, almost God's light,

comes down and hits you, bounces off, into my camera, onto the film

and then there you are.

MUSIC: Apache by The Shadows

It was at the great British seaside that I discovered

the power of photography.

"Having a lovely time but the weather is terrible.

"Hope you're enjoying yours. Amy."

I first came across these little postcards

when I was on holiday in Britain in the 1960s.

Like Amy, writing from here in Instow in Devon,

it was always wet and miserable,

but the postcards were vibrant and colourful.

After years of post-war austerity,

Britain was learning to enjoy itself again.

And black and white really didn't reflect this new-found optimism.

But one forward-thinking entrepreneur caught this new mood

by transforming the ever-popular picture postcard

from monochrome into vivid colour.

With scenes from every corner of the British Isles.

The Britain pictured on a John Hinde postcard

certainly looked a lot more fun.

But how did he conjure up such magical scenes?

'Here on the beach at Instow, I want to see if I can create

'my very own Hinde postcard

'by restaging the original 1960s shot.'

Nice to see you again. Hi. Thank you for coming. Lovely to see you again.

-We rehearsed all this last night.

-Yeah.

-You know your positions?

Don't look at me, the most important thing, don't look at me,

because I want you to pretend to be playing.

This beautiful beach, look at this lovely weather.

Look at that sea!

Perfect day. It was worth waiting for. OK, get into your position.

MUSIC: For Your Love by The Yardbirds

'I'm going to use the same equipment as the Hinde photographers.

'This is a high-quality German Plaubel camera.

'It might look cumbersome now

'but back then the Plaubel was top-of-the-range.'

OK, everybody, that looks great. Going to put it on F6.

'It would have been loaded with the latest Ektachrome colour film,

'which had been introduced to the consumer market after the war.

'And because the camera took a large negative film,

'it produced high-quality photographs.

'So this is my effort.

'The camera has certainly caught some of the depth of the original.'

But the Hinde look didn't just come from his equipment.

John Hinde had made colour picture books before the war

and after a failed attempt at a circus

he went back to colour photography

and began his postcard business in 1957.

Hinde now set out to bring the technicolour glamour of cinema

to the humble postcard.

And like a Hollywood movie mogul, he personally defined the house style.

For Hinde, it was all about colour.

He was a technical innovator and perfectionist.

To get exactly the right look,

Hinde worked closely with cutting-edge printers in Italy.

They painstakingly separated out every colour layer

from the original film.

Then, by hand, they accentuated and changed the colours

in the image.

Hinde himself oversaw this laborious process.

I find it fascinating to see how the original

differs from the final postcard.

The colours of the clothes are clearly heightened

in the end product.

Now let me go to Filey.

'John Hinde's postcards have been a lasting inspiration

'for one of Britain's most important documentary photographers.'

The colours are so vivid.

Absolutely. You can see where my own palette and interest

in, erm...

in the colour pictures came about.

It's pretty much down to you that we're remembering

these John Hinde postcards.

-Why do you think that is?

-Well, I think they're great images.

Not only do they show a place at its absolute best,

all the staging that Hinde was doing then has become, if you like,

the common language of much of contemporary art photography.

So, in a sense, although he was doing it innocently

to make postcards, he was ahead of the game in terms of the techniques

and the way he would take a whole situation and stage it.

You know, it's perfect. And when you look at these pictures,

they tell us about another era so accurately.

The clothing, the architecture, it's all there, down in one postcard.

And the great thing is they become art, if you like,

with the benefit of hindsight, forgive the pun.

And, erm, you know, they're great images.

'These little explosions of colour came onto the market

'just when people were starting to have more cash in their pockets.

'Everything to do with colour photography - cameras, film,

'processing and accessories - was becoming more affordable.

'And throughout the 1960s, the vivid colours of Hinde's postcards

'would gradually seep into everyday snapshots.'

Remember this?

MUSIC: Shakin' All Over by Johnny Kidd & The Pirates

The slide show.

A domestic ritual that emerged with this new technology

of colour film and projectors.

# When you move in right up close to me

# That's when I get the shakes... #

These slides belongs to my wife Becky's parents.

Her father took them.

# Quivers down the back bone

# I've got the shakes... #

Her family often gathered on a Saturday afternoon for a showing.

But then another technical development widened the appeal

of colour photography even further,

doing away with the need for projectors and screens.

'In colour, of course!'

Kodak were the pioneers.

# Shakin' all over... #

In a blitz of advertising in 1963,

they introduced the cheap Instamatic camera onto the market.

It was a piece of Swinging Sixties technology in your own hands.

I remember, when I was 13,

I had an Instamatic and it was so simple to use.

The Box Brownie of its time.

You just slotted in a small cartridge

rather than fumble with a roll of 35mm film.

Then you sent the cartridge off

and you got your colour prints back by post.

It's estimated that over 50 million of us worldwide

were using these cameras in the '60s.

Soon, colour photos began to replace black and white ones

in the family album, bringing a new richness

to how we recorded our lives.

MUSIC: Body Beautiful by The Ronnie Scott Orchestra

But some aspects of British life

just didn't seem to lend themselves to colour photography.

This is a classic view of the North,

and in the 1960s you would have expected it to have been shot

in black and white.

Black and white were still regarded as the proper medium

for serious documentary work.

So if you were a photojournalist sent to the North in the '60s

on a mission to photograph this world of mills, chimneys

and cobbles, it seemed the only way to get the gritty reality

of the place was in monochrome.

As you can see in this fantastic photograph by Ian Berry.

But one photographer was to challenge this cliched view

of the North in an amazing set of colour photographs

commissioned by the Sunday Times Magazine.

John Bulmer had ambitions early on to be a photographer.

He was even kicked out of Cambridge

for taking photographs for Life Magazine.

Here you can see he's not only using colour film,

but he's mixing natural and artificial light.

I'm meeting John to find out how he made such striking photographs.

When I was given the assignment, I thought long and hard about it

because nobody had ever really photographed the North of England

in colour before. It was considered a black and white subject.

-Don McCullin and Neil Libbert and people like that.

-That's right.

And I'd done my own share of black and white North, cobbled streets.

But I realised in colour that if I went and did it on a sunny day

it really wasn't going to work.

It wasn't going to get across the atmosphere of the place.

I deliberately chose to do it in winter

and then I also tried to work in rain and fog

and situations like that, which would mute the background

and give the whole thing a softer approach.

I felt that it would give a better atmosphere of the North.

-And did it change the way you worked?

-Yes.

Erm, colour was different.

And the thing is you can't simply go out and take the same picture

that you would have taken in black and white.

It gets too fussy. There's too much in the frame.

When you take any photographs,

effectively it's a form of abstraction.

You're trying to simplify this complicated world

into something that's simple enough within a frame

to give you some sort of emotional kick

and not set your eye spinning in every different direction.

And if something in the background is the wrong colour,

it can take your eye away...

it takes your eye off the ball in a way.

Tell me why this picture is shot in colour.

Well, I think that it actually works better in colour

than it would in black and white and that's very important.

If a picture is better in black and white

it should be done in black and white.

And I think this picture would be a bit flat and uninteresting

in black and white.

Whereas the blocks of colour are strong enough

to give you an interest

but not distract from the woman's face that you want to look at.

And this is a wide-angle shot, these lovely ladies in their scarves.

What I love is the way she's looking at you.

I remember I was walking around the streets

and I saw these two walking across the bridge in the distance.

And I did take one shot at a distance

just to sort of test the waters almost.

And then as they got closer to me

I pretended to be photographing the building over to one side.

-That old trick.

-The old trick.

But at the same time I got my focus and my exposure and everything ready

and just as they approached I swung the camera round, up to my eye,

and clicked the shot and you can see she's just noticed me.

And her friend is smirking a little because she knows what's going on.

Well, I think her instinct was to sort of look away

and her instinct was to see what's going on.

But when I met her years later, she said at the time they thought

I was fooling around and I didn't have any film in the camera.

But then they did a few weeks, a few months later,

see the picture in the Sunday Times

and then years later I met the lady and I gave her a copy of my book

with her on the cover and I think she was quite touched by that.

'John's pictures fitted into the great tradition

'of the British photo essay.

'But the Sunday Times Magazine had the technology

'and the budget to showcase its reportage in colour.'

So when you get back with all these pictures

that you've taken over three weeks or whatever,

they put this on the cover and now tell us a little bit about

the inside, how they used it as a spread to tell the story.

Well, I mean, one of the great things about the Sunday Times

is they did have the courage to run pictures

as a double spread like this.

And sometimes they had lots of little ones

but they would vary it and they did give good space to pictures.

And they were brave.

Ten years later, at the Photographers' Gallery

they had an exhibition on magazine photography from the '60s.

And they had one room with half a dozen or a few more

of the well-known photographers like Don McCullin, David Bailey,

Terence Donovan, Lord Snowdon and myself.

I was the only person to put any colour photographs on the wall.

All the rest had only used black and white.

Although, by then, all of them were working quite a lot in colour,

they didn't really regard colour photography as serious then.

One of my greatest heroes from this era

was resolute in her refusal to shoot in colour.

She worked for the Sunday Times' rival,

my old paper, the Observer.

Her black and white photographs gave new depth to the 1960s'

most colourful figures.

She captured a moment when Britain was the cultural epicentre

of the world.

Her name was Jane Bown,

and although her use of black and white was practical

as much as an aesthetic choice,

there's an emotional quality to her work.

Her photographs reveal character.

For me, Jane Bown was one of Britain's finest

portrait photographers,

and I was lucky enough to work alongside her.

She was a huge influence on me, both as a photographer and mentor.

I've come to meet Jane's friend and archivist Luke Dodd

to look through her portraits.

'Jane used two different cameras,

'the Rolleiflex and the 35mm.

'Luke's going to show me how these cameras shaped her style.

'Here's a great example of a photograph Jane took

'with the Rolleiflex.

'It's of Rudolf Nureyev, the Russian ballet dancer.'

This is an absolutely uncropped image that Jane took

during the year after Nureyev had defected.

A session with him and Margot Fonteyn

at which she was actually using both cameras.

And, interestingly, the Rollei stuff has all this formal quality.

This absolute perfection about it.

Every bit of the frame is considered and works.

The positioning within that frame is so strong.

And the use of the big white lights as well,

which some people would find they get in the way,

but she uses them to very strong effect.

And wonderful that the hands are slightly out of focus,

because he's moving them. They give a real energy to the picture. It's an absolutely stunning picture.

But that shows you how on the edge technically she was.

She wouldn't trust fast speed, she wouldn't trust fast films,

so she would go into a foyer like this at the Royal Opera House

and make it work.

Because I remember her coming back sweating over stuff

and it was always there.

But I remember the nerves, you know, she was always nervous.

There's two things. One is she needed the nerves.

She talked about time and light being her enemies.

And she needed that buzz in order to work

and to master and marshal all of her extraordinary capacity.

But, at the same time,

she didn't like it to go into unknown territory.

That's why she couldn't bear colour.

Because she couldn't control it to the same degree and she, you know,

you had to send the films off to be developed.

She said no matter how bad a shoot went in black and white you could

salvage something, but in colour it was taken out of her hands.

And there was too much tension.

This was a very macho world, the leather jackets,

you know, the fast lifestyles.

But Jane was the complete opposite of that. Very quiet, unassuming.

Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Well, Jane kind of had a schizophrenic life.

She lived in the country and worked for a Sunday newspaper

which meant she only came to London one or two days a week.

That kind of split suited her very well.

And in the country she was known as Mrs Moss,

and then had this other life two days a week when she came to London.

And she really, she talked about enjoying the milieu

in the office and she liked going to the pub.

But, again, almost as an observer.

She was never part of that scene or that set

and famously she rarely knew who she was photographing.

Two of the biggest heroes of the '60s are Lennon and McCartney.

When Jane went to photograph them,

-would she have even know who they work?

-Erm, no.

I mean, she really was not part of the Swinging Sixties in any sense.

And presumably she knew about the Beatles

and presumably it was an Observer commission.

But she was sent to West Ham to one of their fairly early concerts,

I think it's '63 or '64,

and she spent two hours with them backstage

because they had to arrive so early, and worked with the Rollei

and the 35mm, and this is a good time to, kind of,

identify Jane's evolving style.

From the formality of the kind of classic portraits

of all four of them,

the McCartney one here, sitting having a cigarette,

to...this shoot is slightly later,

she's now using the 35mm completely and far greater licence

and wonderful cropping and wonderful things happening in the image.

And how did Jane land on her signature style?

I think it largely happened when she transferred to 35mm.

There's two very good examples here, both from the mid-'60s.

Charlie Chaplin and Simone Signoret.

Very shallow depth of field, blurry backgrounds,

close-up of the face.

And in the case of the Simone Signoret, the head cut off,

which was fairly radical at the time.

And the eyes were so important to her.

I remember she always worried about the focusing on the eyes.

Jane would bring somebody towards the window

if she were struggling for a bit of light, and do a deal with them.

Say, give me five minutes at the end.

And these look like two of those pictures.

She's brought them to the window where the light is.

And as you say, using shallow depth of field has knocked out

all the extraneous tables and chairs and waiters and whatever.

I saw her at work many times.

She got into a room, she figured out the light,

she had some idle banter with the person but nothing of consequence.

And they were usually bemused. When I knew her she was very elderly.

And they were always intrigued by this figure with battered cameras

that had no light meter,

and looked at how the light looked on the back of her hand.

And then she prowled - she mooched, as she said.

And she went round them, round, circling and circling.

And the famous line would be, "Ah, there you are."

Jane was unlike most of her contemporaries.

She never wanted to be part of the celebrity scene.

And because she was able to see beyond its superficial glamour,

her pictures have stood the test of time.

'And proud independence was the hallmark of a new generation

'of photographers who emerged in the 1970s.

'Working a world away from Fleet Street, they were driven

'to tell stories they believed no-one else was telling,

'documenting their own experiences of a rapidly changing Britain.

'I've come to Handsworth Park in Birmingham to meet Vanley Burke.

'Vanley's love of photography was triggered when his mother gave him

'his beloved Box Brownie for his tenth birthday.

'And as soon as Vanley came to the UK from Jamaica

'he began to create one of the most important records

'of African Caribbean people in Britain.

'Vanley's pictures show Birmingham's growing black community

'from the inside, as its members established and built their lives.

'But he wasn't out to get his photographs in the mainstream press,

'which he believed was only interested in stereotypes.

'Vanley wanted to speak directly to the people in his pictures.

'He showed them locally

'in churches, schools and community centres.

'And Vanley continues to add to his invaluable archive,

'spanning nearly 50 years.'

What were you trying to do with your photographs?

What we were having were very negative images

of African Caribbean people.

And I felt that...

..we're not in control of our history.

We're not in charge of our history.

We didn't...we are the losers in this battle.

And the losers rarely get the opportunity to write their history.

But I felt if we were to...

..have some fundamental understanding about us

and our contribution to society, we need to write it ourselves.

Why have you concentrated on this area?

Well, I felt that this was quite representative

of the country, really.

I didn't need to travel the whole country

to take little bits of photographs in different communities

when I have the whole community here.

MUSIC: Handsworth Revolution by Steel Pulse

So you feel satisfied that that's your audience?

-Oh, yes, yes.

-You know, your community is your audience.

Yes, very much so. For I do respect the people who I photograph.

They're offering, you know, erm... a lot.

You know, I kind of equate it,

a painter uses a brush,

you're really sort of using human flesh, you know, for your work.

'Vanley is a self-taught photographer

'with a natural instinct for arresting imagery.

'His framing and composition are bold.'

Now, you enjoy photographing crowds.

I personally have always found crowds really difficult.

This photograph, the crowd shot,

was taken pretty well from where we are sitting, from this bandstand.

It's just...just over there.

-Looking down onto the crowd.

-Looking down onto the crowd.

I think crowds are important because it tells the story,

it's a collective energy.

People are investigating that photograph to find themselves,

and when they found someone else that they know

they would go away and tell this person or relatives of this person.

It's amazing how many people come and search for themselves

in that photograph because they want to belong to that moment.

Many people say this is your most famous photograph.

Why do you think that is?

Erm, I think...

it's because of the whole question of identity and belonging.

You know, we have the whole story of slavery and colonialism, you know,

and what brings us here and our relationship with the flag.

You know, it's fraught with a pretty terrible history.

So to have this young man with the flag,

it poses a lot of questions about, you know, who we are, where we are,

and who we are likely to be.

And all of those questions are being debated at the moment.

Tell us about this wonderful photograph

of a group of men and a few boys on the seesaw.

This photograph was taken in the park here, just behind me,

where I used to work as a play leader.

On this occasion these youngsters, they would come in the park

because they really didn't have anywhere to...to meet.

And there were not many youth clubs in those days.

They were, I felt they were in limbo.

The idea of them on the seesaw for me was quite poignant.

And I just quickly grabbed my camera and I went across

and I took some photographs.

I love the way the three on the left look like they're floating.

Yes, yes, I think they were pushing, they were going up and down.

-They were on the way up.

-Slightly, yeah.

While Vanley Burke was busy photographing a growing community

in Handsworth, 120 miles up the M1,

another photographer was recording his own city

as it was being pulled down before his very eyes.

MUSIC: Shadowplay by Joy Division

In the 1970s, Leeds was changing beyond recognition.

Across the North, the factory chimneys and the back-to-backs

immortalised by John Bulmer were being swept away.

Entire working-class neighbourhoods disappeared

but photographer Peter Mitchell was there to record the demolitions.

After Peter left art school in London,

he moved to Leeds and began taking photos.

Around the same time, I'd just started as a newspaper photographer

but there's no way my picture editors

would have taken Peter's work

because he just did not operate like a typical photojournalist.

Peter's photos were gentle and personal observations of people

in an urban landscape and they were accompanied by diary-like captions.

"Kingston Racing Motors in Olinda Terrace, spring 1975.

"Why is the woman with the clapped-out Porsche looking

"so naughty? The council demolished the lot shortly after this snap."

"Noel and his lads, the demolition men,

"at Quarry Hill Flats in Eastgate, Leeds in May 1978.

"The men complained they looked so small in the photograph."

But there was one constant in the unrelenting change.

MUSIC: My Life In Rewind by Eagulls

The funfair behind Peter's house would return faithfully every year

and in 1979 he began a series of photographs

of his favourite attraction.

The home-made ghost train and its owner, Francis Gavan.

# A thousand regrets rushed right by... #

'Over 40 years, Peter has recorded how both the ghost train

'and Francis have changed.

'Now he's returning with me to photograph them for one last time.'

Just a bit different this time, Francis.

Normally, you just stand in front of it with the skull above you

-and all the rest of it.

-Yeah.

But as this is kind of getting to the end of the game in some ways,

I think, would you just manage, I've brought me ladders along,

I put them there,

can you get up into the... into the engine compartment?

Yeah.

If I fall off, don't laugh.

'I'm intrigued to see how Peter stages his shots.

'He's very deliberately choreographing the picture.

'As a sports photographer I had to react instinctively to capture

'the action as it unfolded before me, totally different from this.'

A bit more across, I think. So you've got to maybe stretch.

-Over here?

-Yeah.

-Here?

-Yeah, that's OK,. Yeah, that'll do.

-Do you feel all right there?

-Yeah.

It's just the usual business, Francis,

just looking at me with that slightly quizzical look.

Yeah, just...just hold it there.

'I've noticed that Peter is using his Hasselblad.

'It isn't a typical photojournalist's camera.

'Shooting onto large negatives, it produces more detail.

'Peter is using this camera to create his uniquely urban vision.'

I'm really pleased to see that Francis is A, vertical,

and B, that he's actually still got it.

And, as he said to me last time, it just needs a new tyre

and a coat...a new coat of red and we'll be away again, so...

-And a bit of a push.

-Slight push, maybe, yes.

What was Leeds like back in the '70s when you started taking photographs

-around the city?

-There were great demolitions going,

great block of flats in the middle of Leeds was being demolished.

Lots of back-to-backs and so-called slums were being taken away.

Factories were going bust and being demolished.

So I kind of got this reputation that if I photographed it

it wouldn't be there in a couple of months' time.

Which is patently true.

Your contemporaries at the time were photographing in black and white.

Why did you choose colour?

Colour's the natural thing. It's the way we all look at stuff.

And I made some effort to always use kind of muted colours and suchlike.

And this was before the invention of...

saturated colour work, you know?

Erm...flash and all the rest of it.

And I've again retained natural light nearly all the time.

Making sure usually that I photograph

on reasonably dull days.

Hand-held all the time. Never used a tripod.

Does this labour of love now feel over for you?

Today's shooting has been excellent.

This is a special day because I've not seen Francis for some years

and to find out he was still active...

..it gives me great pleasure, Francis. Thanks again.

I still regard photography as...

almost slightly religious.

But it's that idea of, you know, light from out there,

almost God's light, comes down and hits you,

bounces off into my camera, onto the film.

And then there you are, you know,

the speed of light, as I think David Bailey used to say, or somebody.

Peter captured a changing Britain in a humane and idiosyncratic way.

We can clearly see the value of his photographs now.

But back in the '70s his work might have been overlooked

if it hadn't have been for an emerging network

of forward-thinking galleries.

In 1979, curator, historian and champion of British photography,

Val Williams, exhibited Peter's pictures at her gallery in York.

Nearly 40 years later, the gallery is still going strong

and showing Peter's photographs once again.

How important where these galleries to create a new culture

in photography?

I think without them some of those photographers

probably would have given up because there was no outlet

for what they did.

I think they were important politically because they said

to the Arts Council and to the major museums, you know,

we're here, we're not going away.

And the climate in photography was truly dreadful at that time.

The Tate refused to buy photographs.

I think it was the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester

actually had a statement saying it would not exhibit photographs.

Independent galleries played a crucial role

in nurturing outsider talents like Peter Mitchell.

But this new independent scene was diverse.

It also included publishers and workshops

and these went on to foster a photographer

who was very different from Peter.

One of the most acclaimed photographers of her generation,

Fay Godwin, worked in that most traditional of genres - landscape.

Fay struggled to make ends meet as a professional photographer

but she doggedly pursued her love of landscape photography

and she finally made her name in 1985

by publishing a striking black and white collection called Land.

These were beautiful photographs in a Romantic tradition of landscape

going back centuries.

So it's not surprising that her book

became a coffee table bestseller.

Land presents a picturesque vision of Britain.

For Fay, this stood in contrast to her own disillusionment

with other aspects of national life.

'I think we're a grotty little country

'with all sorts of things wrong with it,

'but that we have some of the most varied and delightful landscape

'that I've seen anywhere.

'I love the light here.

'The weather is often infuriating but it's full of surprises

'so one can never get bored with it.'

While Fay was putting together her book,

she attended photographic workshops in Derbyshire to hone her skills.

The South Bank Show filmed Fay on one of these workshops in 1986.

But here, politics was discussed as much as f-stops and lenses.

'The workshops aimed to bring together

'like-minded photographers

'to talk about ideology as well as technique.

'I've come to Derbyshire to follow in Fay's footsteps

'and talk with the founder of the workshops

'that transformed her practice.'

The time was right with a sort of sense of independence

in photography.

A lot of photographers were fed up

with having only to be, you know, making work

to illustrate text or sell products.

-As ordered by a picture editor?

-Exactly.

And one of those was Fay.

What she found, I think, from the workshops was about ideas.

And I think this, you know, was important,

that it was about her,

not just about a particular style, you know, or an approach.

And to be more experimental.

And to push the boat out a bit.

I think this gave her the confidence to actually do that

and obviously the result of that you can see in her work.

Do you think the workshops freed up Fay's radical spirit?

I think so, because she could see it was about ideas.

She could say something with her pictures.

Really, that's what she wanted to do, she wanted to say things

about the land and access to the land

and she was very political in many respects.

And I think she felt that photography could be a vehicle

for her ideas but also her beliefs and her opinions.

Curator Val Williams also attended workshops in the late 1970s.

And she watched on as Fay's work took a new turn.

Fay Godwin was an important person in independent British photography

because she represented landscape.

And that was thin on the ground.

She found out a lot of things about the way the land was being used

and particularly about so much land had been corralled by the MoD

in the Second World War and then not given back.

They were supposed to give it back but they didn't.

So, gradually, as she got to know more about the land

she became more political.

In the pages of Fay's follow-up book, Our Forbidden Land,

you can see the change in her photography.

Here she works almost like a photojournalist,

trying to convey a message about how the land is being bought up,

restricted and controlled,

and how little influence we have over this.

Fay Godwin was showing how politics, money and power

were transforming the landscape.

But, elsewhere, another photographer was examining

how these very same forces were changing us.

MUSIC

Is he serious? Is he a satirist?

Martin Parr's acutely observed images of British people

have certainly divided opinion.

But they've also made him one of the most famous photographers

in the country today.

I notice when you're working, when you start you're very discreet, you work around the edges.

And as you warm up and probably as they get more relaxed with you

you move in amongst the dancers.

Are you conscious of that way of working,

that you soften them up a little?

It's funny, you tell me that, and it's something I'm not conscious of.

It's something that you do.

And, of course, you have to watch and observe and see what's happening

and then find a way of lining up the things to really make it work.

What attracts you to these old seaside towns like Scarborough?

When I was a kid I used to come and stay with my grandfather.

He used to take me here and he's an amateur photographer.

So in a sense the person that really got me excited about photography

was him.

And one of the places we came to was Scarborough.

But it's the photographs Martin took of another seaside town

that made his name.

# Shout, shout, let it all out... #

In 1984, he published a book of photographs taken in New Brighton

near Liverpool.

He called it The Last Resort.

# I'm talking to you, come on... #

There's something about these photographs

that remind me of John Hinde's postcards.

Martin Parr mixes the quality and colour of commercial photography

with documentary realism.

The resulting pictures are hyperreal, almost cartoon-like.

But some critics accuse him of being cruel, even snobbish.

Val Williams showed some of his early work at her gallery.

There was a kind of strange feeling at that time.

Maybe there was a kind of element of hysteria in it,

that there were people you were allowed to photograph,

which was basically toffs.

You could kind of make fun of them as much as you wanted to.

But there were other people that you weren't allowed to photograph.

I think that was a very, kind of, tricky and difficult position,

which is, erm...

which really pervaded photography for a long time.

That kind of discussion about who you could and couldn't photograph.

And it's an argument that's full of holes, really.

Parr denied that he was making fun of his subjects in The Last Resort.

But the criticism must have touched a nerve

because in his follow-up book he turned his camera on his own tribe.

# I find it kind of sad

# The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had... #

Why did you focus on the middle classes

for your book The Cost Of Living?

I mean, previous to that I'd done a project about

the working-class resort of New Brighton, just near to Liverpool.

And I decided after that that I should try and do another class,

a class that actually hadn't been photographed that much,

and that's the class that I was a member of.

In order to do this we decided that I had to move from Liverpool,

about the least middle-class city in the UK, down to Bristol,

which is where I currently live.

# Because I find it hard to take

# When people run in circles

# It's a very, very

# Mad world... #

For me it was partly therapeutic

because here we were in the time of Mrs Thatcher.

I didn't like Mrs Thatcher at all.

I felt quite uncomfortable about her, yet my career was thriving.

So that sort of guilt that's always associated with the middle classes

was one of the reasons why I wanted to explore it as a subject matter.

I went to things that I was part of, such as, you know,

my partner was pregnant so we went to the antenatal classes

run by the NCT.

But then I also photographed things that I didn't feel particularly

connected to, like craft fairs. I've never been a big fan of them.

So I went to them.

So I used my prejudices as almost my starting point.

So I did both the things I liked and the things that I didn't like.

How important is humour in your work?

People are funny. I mean, there's no question about that.

To pretend that people and what they do aren't...isn't funny and...

It would be ridiculous.

But it's not just to take the piss out of people, you know?

I'm taking, remember, the piss out of myself, you know,

that's the first thing to say.

And I'm just photographing people with a sense of mischief.

And there is a great, sort of, satirical, you know,

tradition in the UK which I feel I'm part of.

Martin Parr's eye misses nothing.

He made a comedy out of life in the '80s

by scrutinising the most banal of activities.

This was a decade driven by aspiration.

How you looked, what you wore,

and where you shopped wear badges of social status.

Religiously attending aerobics classes

or buying the right kind of furniture

were tickets into a new middle class.

With his use of colour and flash,

Parr's photographs look more like glossy magazine shots

than traditional documentary images.

This made his satire of consumerism even more pointed and effective.

I was picking up on the language of commercial photography

and I wanted to show almost, like, quality of advertising

with the colour but, of course, I'm applying it

to my own art situation rather than, sort of, a commercial situation.

So even now I still use flash a lot because I like the intensity

that it brings.

It makes things...it gives them a slightly surreal feel to it.

So even though I often don't need flash, I will have it on the camera

and include it because it just helps to, sort of, detach it

from the reality that we're looking at

and it makes it clearer that it's an interpretation of the scene

rather than just a depiction of it.

There's an absurdity in this book which is just wonderful, I think.

And I think probably it's his most autobiographical book

because he was in exactly that same position, as we all were.

You know, we'd stopped being very young

and we were trying to work out who we were and where to go

and how to deal with, kind of, all this stuff.

And I think that it's a kind of growing up book, I think.

And I've always loved it because of that.

In his photographs, Martin Parr shows us a parallel reality.

One that's instantly recognisable but somehow ludicrous.

A kind of Parr World, if you like.

And his pictures appeal, I think,

because they show that everyday life

can be both humdrum and boring

but at the same time incredibly strange and surreal.

Since the publication of The Cost Of Living,

Martin has been keen to embrace whatever new technology

can improve his practice.

Today, I see he is using a digital camera

to photograph the dancers.

The advances of the technology in terms of digital

have been quite profound in the sort of nine or ten years

since I've been using digital.

And the quality you get now is quite staggering.

It's just mind-blowing when you see the big prints you can get

from a 35mm DSLR.

But unlike Martin Parr, I'm a little bit more sceptical

about digital photography and what it means for my own work.

BELL RINGS

Today I also use a digital camera

that can take thousands of high-quality images,

some of which can be sent over to picture editors in seconds.

And these cameras are more like computers.

Focus and exposure are automated,

which certainly makes photographing fast action easier.

But my worry is now that the camera does so much of the work

that less consideration goes into the actual composition

and framing of the picture.

And, of course, everybody's a photographer now.

In the mid-1990s, it was estimated that 20 billion images

were being taken worldwide.

And by 2013, that figure had doubled.

So, in this vast ocean of images, how are you supposed to take

a really great photograph - one that actually stands out?

Though I've got my doubts about digital,

I know it has opened up fresh possibilities

for a new kind of photographer.

I've come to Manchester to visit someone

who's exploring the new frontier of photography.

Mishka Henner makes startling pictures using material

he finds on the internet.

'But in his studio there's not a camera in sight.

'Mishka uses satellite imagery to access forbidden places

'such as these areas of industrial farmland in Texas.

'Now, it strikes me that Mishka has something in common with Fay Godwin.

'These are very different kinds of images

'but both try to reveal how the landscape is used and controlled.

'Mishka is following on from Fay by pushing the limits

'of this oldest of photographic genres.

'So I've asked him to follow her and create a new set of photographs

'revealing secret parts of Britain.

'Places that she could only dream of accessing.

'And I want Mishka to show me, step-by-step, how he works.'

So, what do you think this is?

Well, to my eye, I think this is an industrial park of some sort.

I imagine, by looking at this, a series of buildings

that are interconnected, which are quite big and quite important.

Well, an industrial park would be, yeah, an interesting take on it.

It's a map of Britain.

And each colour represents a different zone

that is restricted or hazardous for one reason or another.

So the red areas are danger areas where military activity takes place.

The grey areas are the flight corridors

used by commercial and non-commercial aircraft.

And how do you find this information out?

This is a map that's available online.

It's a map that any pilot or would-be pilot would use

to know where they can and can't go in the British Isles.

The minute you start to find restricted areas

you're already on to something

because the fact that it's restricted means

there's something there that is being hidden away, if you like.

And then what do you do with it next?

There's a reference document that goes with the map

that tells you the exact co-ordinates of these areas.

So what we would do is we would take those co-ordinates

and put those co-ordinates into a basic satellite image

piece of software like Google Earth

and see the aerial imagery of that area.

So we can take... we'll take this one here.

MUSIC: Sun by Caribou

So this is a site in Essex called Fingringhoe Ranges.

It's a site used by the military to...

As a...as a live firing range.

It's also, as it happens...

A Site of Special Scientific Interest

and a special protection area

and there's a nature reserve in there as well.

It's the kind of place that is full of all of the contradictory elements

that make up Britain.

This is the area that we were looking at on the screen.

So what I've done is, I've taken the boundaries

set by the aerial chart

and I've superimposed that over the satellite image.

So you've got the exact co-ordinates of the location,

which the boundary marks.

And then you've got the name of the site itself.

Now, is this documentary photography?

Well, I think it's trying to make things visible

that are, for the most part, I think, kept hidden away from us,

which is what I think all good documentary and art does.

There is a photograph in there that's in the world

that I have changed the context of

but there's also a combination of lots of other elements

such as the graphic element which comes from the chart,

the text element which comes from research documents.

So, in a sense, it's...

You can think of them as samples, different samples...

-As in music?

-Like, like, that's right, yeah.

As a musician might work today, taking samples of different things

and then putting them together to make a new composition.

You know, we're living in a time where

there's an absolute abundance of material.

And to not work with it, regardless of whether you are

the original author of the original sample seems...

it seems absurd.

The digital revolution hasn't just profoundly changed the way

we make photographs, but also how we present and share them.

MUSIC: The Look by Metronomy

Instagram fuses two aspects of the digital world -

photography and social media.

And 16-year-old Molly Boniface from Huddersfield

is one of 500 million Instagram users worldwide.

With her smartphone,

Molly takes snapshots and shares them instantly online.

This clearly isn't just a hobby for Molly.

Look how many photographs she takes.

Molly expresses herself through photography every day of her life.

The medium has never been more alive

than in the hands of someone like her.

'I've come to learn a little bit more

'about its role in Molly's life.'

Tell me how important photography is to you.

Right, I think, for me personally, it's really important

because I've always liked art

and I think photography's the most instant way of doing that.

And all the time, like, wherever...

If I go out, that's what I look forward to.

To taking pictures of whatever I see.

Since I've got a phone as well,

that's something that I can just use all the time.

-And that's always there.

-So the camera is always with you?

Yeah, yeah, it's just what I do all the time.

I don't know.

And, essentially, are you having fun with photography?

-Is that what it's really about?

-Yeah, yeah.

It's a social thing as well, like.

Me and all my friends, sort of, that's something that we bond over,

it's the photos that we take and...

we share them and it's cool.

Do you have any idea how many people are looking at your photos?

Well, I have on my account about 1,300 followers.

So, that's quite a lot of people, I think.

More people than I could show otherwise.

There are people that follow me that I don't know,

they don't know me,

we never speak, you know, they could be from anywhere.

But they've just seen my pictures and thought that they like them.

Are the photographs of you on Instagram really you

or a version of you?

I think it's very much a version of me that I choose to show everyone.

Because I am aware that I have a lot of followers

and everyone can see that.

And I think it's kind of like a public diary

that I think looks nice.

So I choose to show everyone.

And when I look back it's like a refined version,

whereas I keep other stuff, other pictures, just for me.

MUSIC: The Look by Metronomy

What makes a great photograph for you?

Well, I actually took one of my favourite ones on my Instagram here.

I'll show you.

It was my friend taking a photo of this view.

So you're taking a picture of your mate taking a picture?

Yeah, yeah, basically.

I just...I really like this one because I really like the symmetry,

you know, and I like the contrast of her jumper, you know, and bag,

it's so bright against just green.

And can you show me how you worked up to this picture?

Well, yeah, I took a few others but that was the only one I posted.

You know, I took, like, panorama ones because it's nice.

This place is so spooky, isn't it? Look at the mood of that.

Yeah, it's quite dark light.

-What would you do with the rest? Would you keep them, or...?

-Yeah.

I mean, I've kept them all and I think I've printed a few off.

But, yeah, that was the only one that I chose to put online.

So that's gone out there to all your followers around the world.

That was the one that was worthy!

'Taking photos is central to who Molly is.

'And it's the self-portrait that dominates her pictures.

'For her and many others,

'it has become THE photograph of the 21st century.

'So the most important subject for the everyday photographer

'is now themselves.'

MUSIC: Dayvan Cowboy by Boards of Canada

I've travelled a long way since my journey began

in front of a window in Lacock Abbey

where the first British photograph was taken more than 180 years ago.

I've seen the changing ways we've pictured ourselves.

I've learned how science and technology

have shaped the course of photography

at every stage of its history.

And how great art has come from the camera,

with every era producing its own photographic masterpieces.

And looking at all of this,

I can only marvel at the genius photography has for reinvention.

And that makes me optimistic for the future.

Because my profession has always shown itself ready and willing

to find ever more extraordinary ways

of bringing Britain into focus.