Paul Reas

Paul Reas (*1955) grew up in a working-class family on the Buttershaw estate in Bradford. He studied documentary photography at the University of Wales in Newport with David Hurn, Daniel Meadows and Martin Parr. Initially working as a photojournalist, he then concentrated on colour photography, using a large format camera. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, in his I CAN HELP series, he photographed Britons flocking to the newly built shopping centres, encouraged by cheap credit.

 

I can Help

 

Buoyed by her defeat of the miners, victory in the Falklands War of 1982 and the survival of an assassination attempt in 1984, Margaret Thatcher increasingly saw herself as invincible and on the right side of history. Her neoliberal policies, faith in a free market economy and a firm belief in individualism turned British culture from a ‘we’ to a ‘me’ generation. The deregulation of the banking system meant that credit was easy to come by and consumer spending was rising fast. This growth in consumption was becoming more and more evident in Britain in the mid-1980s. The then new shopping malls, situated on the edges of cities, were the new cathedrals of consumption, and the new ‘retail parks’, with their supermarkets and furniture stores, were the parish churches. Shopping and the purchasing of an off-the-shelf lifestyle were becoming new leisure activities. In addition, ‘Thatcherism’ also encouraged home ownership. Fundamental to her idea was that government, which had built between a third and half of all homes for the previous three decades, should step back. Councils could no longer build council housing. The market would provide. Houses would be built by housebuilders. As a result, new large private housing estates, aimed at newly aspirational individuals, were rapidly becoming a feature of most towns and cities. - Paul Reas

 

It was this consumer culture which became the subject for, I Can Help, published by Cornerhouse Publications in 1988.

 

 

Germany, 1980s

 

 

Penrhys Estate, 1984

 

 

 

 

The Valleys Project, Electronic Social Club, 1987

 

 

I Can Help, 1986–1988