Hold Tight Riders

A fairground photography project

Earlier this year I started selecting a few of my 1980s fairground photographs for a reprinting project. I have retained the negatives from the start of my taking photographs - in the early 1980s with a crappy 110 camera and from autumn 1983 with the 35mm Olympus OM10 which gave a better quality picture (until the camera conked out a few years later). I have diaries from the time so I could match my fair-going trips with the negatives and add detailed dates and locations to these reprints.

A couple of things arose: firstly, that I didn’t use the camera for other purposes and certainly not for when I went on extended tours with various bands; secondly, that there appears to be a few trips where the negatives are missing, or perhaps I just didn’t take photographs?

I have written elsewhere on this blog about my hitch-hiking to fairs in my teen years, as I started to tire from the scene of following bands around. I’d generally stick my thumb out with a vague plan of a few destination fairs, and was prepared to pick off unexpected finds as I went along and divert a trip accordingly. I usually had a sleeping bag and rolled up foam so I could kip on the road if required.

My photographs on the whole were pretty bland, albeit an important document of a rapidly changing scene. They recorded what was on the fair and how it looked, and have been useful for the fairground ‘enthusiast’ scene which is akin to a trainspotter milieu. In every reel of film I’d generally have a couple of close-up artwork shots and perhaps something a bit more considered. I’d often shoot close-up with the wide angle lens to give a bit of dramatic sweep and intensity. If the light was good you’d have a sharpness than ran through a decent depth of field.

I started to weed out the more interesting photographs and convinced myself that these would have a wider appeal. I convinced myself to the point that not only would they have an appeal, they would also be purchased by arty-nostalgic customers. That was a mistake, but you have to try these things. I realised now I had over-invested my aesthetic emotions in the photographs, and that people generally don’t buy other people’s photographs to hang on their walls.

I did a couple of art markets and priced them up to make a small amount on the reproduction costs. I had used a professional printer so these production costs were quite high. This was apparently too much for the paying public. The first market I did I was positioned next to a stall doing cheap prints of AI sausage dogs hybridised into Peaky Blinders, bulldogs cocking their legs with the phrase “piss off”, and more dogs standing alongside a fresh turd saying “tough shit”. Finally, there was a print of the slogan “See You Next Tuesday” which was doing a roaring trade. I sold nothing.

Throughout July I had the 15 photographs on display in a shop/gallery under the grandiose title Form, Function & Fun. There was a bit of interest but no sales. Oh well, you live and learn.

Here are five of the images with a bit of context.

‘Ride On’ - Rugeley, 1984

This is a dynamic view of a Skid car lettered as ‘Ride On’. It was taken at Rugeley, Staffordshire in June 1984. I came across this fair by accident on the way to the south west (starting out from Derby). There was a bit ‘tackle’ there that was quite scruffy and I didn’t photograph that. Looking back, I wish I did, as the other machines present quickly disappeared from travelling. I liked this Skid and its more vernacular artwork. Black is not a traditional fairground colour, but there was a craze for it in the 80s. Fairground art is driven by crazes. The phrasing on the cars was slightly dated to a 70s disco and glam era. Again, much of fairground art has subcultural residualism, celebrating music scenes that have passed into obsolescence.

‘Closed’ - Derby, 1984

This photograph was more local to me, taken in July 1984 at Chaddesden, a housing estate suburb of Derby. It shows the centre paybox of Albert Proctor’s Waltzer, with the ride in the process of building up such that light is flowing into the scene. This illumination gives a view of surplus details such as the scratched, working nature of the Jackson paintwork, the dated ‘No Smoking’ sign and fare of 25p, and a ‘Volvo Buy British’ partial sticker. There are a matching pair of health and safety signs curved into the paybox resembling the famous anamorph in Holbein’s 1533 painting The Ambassadors. In fact, Holbein’s anamorph of a skull was a vanitas object, reminding us of death - a kind of health and safety notice.

‘Hold Tight’ - Runcorn, 1984

A lucky photograph, snapped just as the two girls are in frame ‘riding the bars’. This practice, outlawed not long after the photo was taken, involved pinning yourself to the safety bars of the Speedway. It was very much a gendered practice, with boys doing the daredevil stuff and girls sat on the bikes in admiration. These girls, in matching blue kagools and spray-on jeans, are taking things into their own hands. The location is Runcorn. The mid-blue of the artwork base is quite unusual, but matches the girls’ attire.

‘Mullet Battle’ - Nottingham, 1985

This was an accidental photograph, captured as I was finishing off a reel of film. It is not particularly well framed for representing the structure and detail of the ride, but instead freezes a subcultural moment as a mulleted spectator in fine 80s fashion overlooks a mulleted fairground worker leaning in to the Skid car to take a fare.

‘Geezer’ - Mitcham, 1985

The final photograph is also not meant to be. It was taken at Mitcham Common in 1985 when I was doing a round up of the London bank holiday fairs. In the 80s this was a huge endeavour which I normally did over 2 days - north then south. I used public transport so it was a logistical ordeal, but I challenge that I relished. On this occasion the fairground worker demanded I take his photograph after he watched me clamber over the ride taking some composed photographs of the artwork. I couldn’t pretend to take his photograph, as his ears were tuned for the concerted click of the push-button shutter on the OM10. Ker....lick. I quietly reasoned with myself that it was pointless as the demanding subject of the photograph would never see the finished thing. But here it is, 40 years later. Slightly blurred through the movement of the car, but perfectly capturing the ‘geezer-dom’ of the person who sits at the pivot of rotation. Damon Albarn eat your heart out.