"As with all Hinde imagery, the Butlin's photographs show an idealised view of the world and, after the passage of time, acquire the power of a lost dream. The most remarkable thing of all is that the photographs were painstakingly produced not for any aspirational ideas or as great art, but as humble postcards to sell for a few pence to holidaymakers." Martin Parr, 2002 In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the John Hinde Studio, based in Dublin, produced a series of postcards to be sold at Butlin's holiday camps, eight of them in Britain and one in Ireland. This was Butlin's heyday with over a million holidaymakers staying at the network of camps each year. With innovative use of colour and elaborate staging - the trademarks of a John Hinde postcard - it was the job of the Studio's hired hands, two German photographers and one Briton, to execute the images to Hinde's rigorous formula and standards. Compared to previous postcards, the Hinde photographs offered Butlin's a brighter and more sophisticated new look. Each photograph is a narrative tableaux; elaborately stage managed involving large casts of real holidaymakers acting their roles in Butlin's quiet lounges, ballrooms and Beachcomber bars. They were an ordeal for photographers Elmar Ludwig, Edmund Nägele and David Noble who now view the Butlin's assignments as among the most demanding of their professional lives. Mainly without assistance, a single photographer would conceive the scene, marshal the crowd, set up and manage lighting from multiple sources, and get only one shot at the end of a day's preparation. No other postcard publisher went to these lengths to record a scene. Curated by Martin Parr Produced by Chris Boot