"Yate’s Wine Lodges, Ashton-Under-Lyne"

gelatin silver print

During 1982 to ’83, Parr explored the very British tradition of drinking in pubs, choosing to focus on a chain of public houses founded in the Manchester satellite town, Oldham, in 1884. Yate’s Wine Lodges are the oldest pub chain in the UK, and at the time of Parr’s setting about photographing every branch, most of them were in the North West of England. Parr was attracted to both their design and the rituals of drinking and socializing, which took place inside. He said, “the unspoiled, original wine lodges, with their high ceilings and bare floorboards, their pillars and rails for propping yourself upright, seem clearly designed for the determined and joyless business of taking the quickest route to oblivion.”
“The day in the life of a pub is captured, with people drinking on their own or with friends, the queueing system of drinkers forming an orderly line behind a rail and how the atmosphere changes depending on the number of drinkers,” explains Howes, commenting, “The images aren’t posed and show Parr’s interest in gestures, glances, movement and composition, which looks forward to his more familiar contemporary color reportage work.”
(Magnum Photo)