Paul Reas’ Flogging a Dead Horse (Reas, 1993) is a collection of images that portray the British Heritage tourist industry.  This is an industry that sells itself as  providing a view into the past, onto the heyday of Britain’s industrial revolution, and its Empire.  This industrial era has now gone, and so we have an industry based on an industry no longer present, hence the collection’s title ‘Flogging a Dead Horse’.

Reas talks of these museums offering “a novel (if spurious) sense of place and identity to a country which had lost its old ‘eternal truths’ of industry and empire, reassuring us that our lives are better in the new service economy than those of our parents in ‘the bad old days’ of the industrial past.” (ibid.).  Of course, what we see in these locations is not really the bad old days, we see, as Reas says, “a single romantic and idealised version of it.” (ibid).

Reas’ images cast a political comment on this effect by showing us a view of the people visiting the museums, rather than images of the museums themselves.  The images are bright and bold, reminiscent, I find, of Martin Parr as there is an air of eccentricity to the content of some of them.  What I find interesting is that by stepping back from the museum and looking at the people visiting them, we don’t just see the people, we do see the museum scenes, but now I see them in a different light, I see them as fake, ridiculous almost.  Why would, as shown in Figure 1, a family want to dress up like miners or hold a lantern, but many willingly do, I think I might have at one time! 

Figure 2 shows us a large group of people squeezing to see through a window what is an idealised scene, I presume, of what an old workers cottage might have looked like; I doubt it would have even been as pristine as that.

Figure 3 is perfectly timed as Reas has managed to capture a tourist wearing a jumper that has a Lowry image woven into the front at the same time as having an old looking factory in the background.  To me this seems to enhance the fake nature of the whole scene as we see the non-realistic factory scene of the jumper replicated in the museum.  The very bored looking tourist stood next to the man in the jumper adds to the satirical nature of the image.

This set of images grows in strength through the set in my view.  I think any single image on its own does not necessarily convey the satirical or political statement that Reas is making.  But when looking at the images as a set, one starts to appreciate the point being made.  Much like Parr, the satire is not directed at the individuals in the scene and more at the wonder that such places can exist and why they exist, why do we cling on to these idealised scenes when in theory at least we have progressed beyond them. 

There is quite a contract here with Late Photography which is designed to make us stop and think. Here we are two steps removed: firstly the idealised vision on display at the museum, but secondly by Reas’ technique of photographing the visitors and their behaviour rather than the museum itself. As a result, the sense of place we feel is one of the visitor center or museum itself rather than of the topic the museum is supposed to be portraying.

Bibliography

Reas, P., 1993. Flogging a Dead Horse — Paul Reas Photographer. [online] Paul Reas Photographer. Available at: <https://www.paulreas.com/portfolio-1/project-two-pa8ag> [Accessed 21 March 2021].

Figures

Figure 1. Reas, P., 1993. untitled. [image] Available at: <https://www.paulreas.com/portfolio-1/project-two-pa8ag> [Accessed 21 March 2021].

Figure 2. Reas, P., 1993. untitled. [image] Available at: <https://www.paulreas.com/portfolio-1/project-two-pa8ag> [Accessed 21 March 2021].

Figure 3. Reas, P., 1993. untitled. [image] Available at: <https://www.paulreas.com/portfolio-1/project-two-pa8ag> [Accessed 21 March 2021].