Cheap & Cheerful

Daily Life, third prize stories

1993

Making a virtue of financial necessity, thousands of British vacationers return to the beaches of their youth rather than taking package trips to Mediterranean resorts. As the economic recession forces them to tighten their belts, they rediscover their own beaches for a cheap and cheerful holiday.

Commissioned by: Katz Pictures for Sunday Express Magazine

Photo Credit: Richard Baker

Richard Baker is perhaps best known for ‘Red Arrows’, his 2005 book of reportage and landscape about Britain’s Royal Air Force aerobatic team.

September 2009 saw the publication of two more books: ‘A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary’ (Profile Books) which followed ‘The Pleasure and Sorrows of Work’ published in the UK and Australia by Hamish Hamilton (April, 2009) and in the US (Pantheon). Both were collaborations with the writer (Alain de Bottom). In 2015, his photography helped tell nine stories about people who take risks (‘Rise Wise’ by Polly Morland, Profile Books 2015).

Otherwise, Richard’s corporate imagery has been presented in company literature and photo-essays in the world’s image-led magazines. He tries to pursue projects that are geographical or merely themes of the incongruous and the everyday: ideas that are topical or aesthetically-driven. Richard Baker was educated in Documentary Photography at Gwent College of Art, Newport.

There is also an extensive archive of film images from the mid-80s onwards that are constantly being prepared for Photoshelter, Getty (via in Pictures) and Alamy.

Baker was represented by the Katz/IPG agency for many years but nowadays he handles all aspects of his photography.