Butlins was once the ultimate holiday destination for the British working classes - a byword for affordable leisure. In the 1960s, its creator Billy Butlin commissioned colour photography maestro John Hinde to immortalise his empire. The results spawned a great tradition - the lurid, hyper-real postcard. Each shot was stringently composed by Hinde and his team, and the colour saturation doctored to render everything in unnatural Technicolor. At the time, the results were deliberately populist adverts, but now these delightfully artificial social documents have, unintentionally, become art instead.
Holly Kyte
'Our True Intent Is All For Your Delight: The John Hinde Butlins Photographs', part of the Colour before Color exhibition at Hasted Hunt Gallery, New York, until July 20
