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Hands up for a happy New Year’s Eve in the pub, Somerset style, by Martin Parr
Martin Parr took this picture on New Year’s Eve, 1992, in the village of Chew Stoke in Somerset – a few months after another Conservative election victory.
It was the last act of a year-long project in which Parr documented village life – cricket matches, summer weddings and “little tensions between commuters and more traditional ways of life”. Much of that observation inevitably centred on the pub. “The landlord was quite crazy,” Parr recalls, “and he is being set upon here by a member of the Chew Stoke women’s rugby team, who also tended to be quite boisterous.” The photographer had got to know the people well enough by then for them almost to forget his camera was there. Continue reading...