Postcards from New Brighton
Bull, Stephen (2010) Postcards from New Brighton. [Exhibition/show, Photography]
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Continuing his work taking virtual 'photographs' in the online virtual world of Second Life, Stephen Bull commissioned his avatar to take photographs of the part of Second Life known as 'New Brighton'.
The Second Life New Brighton is partly based on the real Brighton, the seaside resort on the south coast of the UK. New Brighton shares some of its well-known landmarks with Brighton, such as the Brighton Pier and 'doughnut' sculpture on the end of a jetty, as well as a version of the i360, an observation tower that is still planned, but not yet built in the real Brighton.
Stephen Bull was born just a few miles from central Brighton and has lived in Brighton for over 15 years. He made the work in the middle of Brighton without leaving his front door. The avatar wandered New Brighton, as a traditional street documentary photographer might, and made a series of environmental self portraits. In each image, the avatar is on his own; a point emphasised by riding the carousel alone, or sitting on a bench made for two with his arm around nothing. This is in contrast to Stephen Bull's own experience of Brighton, where he sees as many familiar faces as he would as if he lived in a village every time he goes out (although he also sees a lot of unfamiliar faces too).
From these images, he selected 22 photographs to form the series Postcards From New Brighton. In keeping with the virtual creation of the work, the work must never be published in physical form (such as a book). Instead the series made a virtual tour during the Brighton Photo Fringe festival in 2010, appearing on the websites YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and Wordpress.
Postcards From New Brighton paralleled Martin Parr’s commissions for the Brighton Photo Biennial 2010, where he asked three photographers - Stephen Gill, Rinko Kawauchi and Alec Soth - to photograph the (real) Brighton. It also referenced Parr’s first colour project The Last Resort, made in the seaside resort of New Brighton near Liverpool in the early to mid-1980s and published as a book in 1986. Just as New Brighton was in a dilapidated state at that time, so too is Second Life becoming increasingly desolate as other more fashionable online pursuits are taken up. The book of Parr’s The Last Resort starts and ends with the reproduction of early 20th-century postcards from New Brighton. When photographs are taken in Second Life, the images are emailed to a recipient of choice and referred to as ‘postcards’, so Stephen Bull's series is titled Postcards From New Brighton in a reference to both 20th and 21st century leisure practice.
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