Melancholy Tintypes of an Abandoned Amusement Park
Nothing says summer like a day at an amusement park, but few kids would comfortably venture into the abandoned fun land captured by Rob Ball in his series Dreamlands.
Nothing says summer like a day at an amusement park, but few kids would comfortably venture into the abandoned fun land captured by Rob Ball in his series Dreamlands. The eerie tintypes, on view at the Photographer’s Gallery in London, show vines choking the tracks of roller coasters and twisting around deserted outbuildings. It seems impossible that this was ever one of the UK’s biggest tourist attractions.
The park first opened in 1920 on fairgrounds in Margate, Kent that had long hosted carnivals and circuses. The park’s biggest draw was the Scenic Railway, a wooden roller coaster with sides that made it look like an alpine mountain range. The place enjoyed a good six decades of popularity until the 1980s, when its number of visitors began dwindling. In 2003, it finally closed.
Ball had visited the amusement park as a kid, and he returned to photograph its decay in 2013. Since he was working with an antique wet plate process, he had to develop the tintypes on-site; the dust and daylight that inevitably seeped in gave them a moody, atmospheric quality. Ultimately, the images draw attention to the cycle of the landscape. Just how does a park go from being a place that attracts crowds to one that repels them? And what happens to it once its best years are over? In this case, the answer is a happy one. After a campaign to revive it, the park was fully restored and reopened in June.
Rob Ball: Dreamlands continues at the Photographer’s Gallery (16–18 Ramillies St, London) through August 2.
