Dreamland
amusement park in Margate, Kent opened to the public in 1920 though
its site has an even longer historical link with fairgrounds, having
been first used for amusement rides as early as 1880. During the
height of its popularity it was one of the UK’s best-loved amusement
parks and a top tourist attraction. Years of steady decline and a
slow dismantling of iconic rides led to the park’s eventual closure
in 2003. Yet it retained a place in the hearts of many local people
and when plans were announced to develop housing on the site a
decade long public campaign was triggered with the aim of restoring
it as a fully operational amusement park. The campaign succeeded and
the park reopened to the public in Summer 2015.
Rob Ball remembers the park with great
fondness from his own childhood visits. In ‘Dreamlands’ he
incorporates colour photographs of found objects and of the park as
it fell into disrepair, as well as black and white archive
photographs and tintypes. The tintypes use a process created in the
1860s, around the same time that the Dreamland site began being used
as an entertainment venue. For Ball, tintypes emphasise the
physicality of the landscape and its imperfections and he used the
process to document the initial stages of reconstruction at the
park. On each visit he had to construct a temporary darkroom in
which to coat, sensitise, expose, develop and fix the tintypes.
Dust, debris, fingerprints and even the quality of daylight are all
recorded on its surface, so that each plate carries evidence of the
environment it was made in and even of the photographer himself. The
process itself also has strong historical links to the seaside where
itinerant photographers would set-up temporary studios offering
family portraits to weekend and holiday visitors.
Rob Ball is an artist and Deputy
Director of SEAS Photography, Director of Obsolete Studios / The Old
Lookout and Senior Lecturer in Photography at Canterbury Christ
Church University, UK. He has exhibited at The Photographers’
Gallery, London; Format Festival, Derby; Illinois State University,
USA; and the Sidney Cooper Gallery, Canterbury. His work is in the
permanent collections of University of the Arts and The National
Portrait Gallery. |
