“Starkly poignant”
Seaside Photographed review – a rush of revelation ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
“Seaside Photographed ... includes masterpieces by Henri Cartier-Bresson as well as works by artists whose names should be far better known. Michael Bennett’s black and white photographs from the late 1970s, for instance, show seasides from Llandudno to St Leonards as melancholy and austere in every season, homing in on the weather-beaten faces of solitary workers – the signalman, the kiosk girl, the caretaker lugging the barrier to a pier in dark rain at closing time. They are starkly poignant laments.”
Laura Cumming, The Observer, May 2019
“Utterly uncompromising”
“Michael Bennett’s extraordinary Seaside in Summer and Winter (1980) inflects acute visual observations with satirical pessimism. This series ... was commissioned by Llandudno’s Mostyn Gallery, briefing Bennett to document the town in winter for an exhibition in the following year. The then progressive gallery director Hugh Adams actively encouraged a melancholic picturing of the North Wales seaside town. But at the point of delivery Adams had gone and the passive desperation captured by the photographer was not quite what was anticipated by the incoming director. “To salvage the gallery’s position, Bennett was asked to return and record what was assumed would be a more optimistic summertime view. “Contrary to the commissioner’s expectations, Llandudno in summer appeared in Bennett’s photographs as austere and alienating as in wintertime.
“The submitted work was ill-received, with the new gallery director openly loathing the work and the regional press printing numerous critiques. “Partisan locals’ bewilderment is understandable. Bennett’s work is utterly uncompromising, with one photograph exclaiming in uppercase: “YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED”- warned of what? It reads as a ‘scare’ sign, alerting us to the dangers of a visit. Nevertheless, his work foreshadowed the huge decline in visitors in the 1980s, thereby providing a robust visual antidote to any rose-tinted assumptions about the British seaside.”
Seaside Photographed
Val Williams & Karen Shepherdson, Thames & Hudson, 2019
'The Family': Gardner Centre, Falmer, 1977 (now Attenborough Centre For the Creative Arts)
'The Family': Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 1977
'The Road To Barmouth': Mostyn Gallery, Llandudno, 1980
'Michael Bennett Photomontage, Primavera Fotografica': Barcelona, 1984
'The Other Britain Revisited: Photographs from New Society' Victoria & Albert Museum, 2010
'Things': Victoria & Albert Museum, 2012
'Seaside Photographed: Turner Contemporary Museum, Margate, 2019
'Pier Closing Time': Oriel Mostyn, Colwyn Bay, 2021
'Winter Group Show': Linden Hall Studio, Deal, 2021
'Pier Closing Time': Spode Museum, Stoke, 2022
'Winter Group Show': Linden Hall Studio, Deal, 2022