Thursday, August 25, 2016

There's nowt so queer as folk traditions

The photos in Homer Sykes' 1977 book Once A Year may capture the unself-conscious and frequently joyous participation of ordinary British men and women in rituals that seem bizarre and ridiculous to the outsider, but to the modern viewer familiar with the likes of The Wicker Man, Hot Fuzz and the video for Radiohead's 'Burn The Witch' it's hard not to see some of them - such as the those of the Marshfield Mummers Paperboys and the Burry Man - as unsettling and sinister rather than quaint and innocent.

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