Hiepler, Brunier,

Blackpool is a town and seaside resort on the Lancashire coast in North West England. It is one of the birth places of modern mass-tourism. Due to Blackpool’s location near the industrial centers of Liverpool and Manchester, it quickly became an important destination for the holidays of the region’s working class.

As a result of being completely dependent on its regionally oriented tourism as a destination for the working class’s ‘ordinary people’, Blackpool’s economy began a steep decline in the 1980’s. Thatcher’s and subsequent governments’ neoliberal policies have only widened the gap between the rich and poor and Blackpool continues to suffer today from competition with cheap holiday packages to the warmer and more exotic coastlines of Europe.

Today, Blackpool has the highest poverty rate and the lowest life expectance of any seaside resort in England. This may account for Blackpool being a quintessential Brexit stronghold with nearly 68% of the local population having voted for Brexit. And this, despite Blackpool’s recent infrastructure improvements being generously funded by the European Union.

We were interested in the impact of these conditions on the city and the tensions between the amusement parks of the Golden Mile, as well as on the other side, the visible decay, the pervasive poverty. The resulting images capture some of these absurdities and strange contradictory spaces that have arisen in Blackpool as a result of these circumstances.