While working as a bingo caller at Cain’s Amusements on the Herne Bay seafront, George Wilson photographed the staff, regulars and summer visitors who gathered around its bingo tables, arcade games and fruit machines. Made across two seasons in 1981 and 1982, the resulting collection is a sustained documentation of a golden era of British amusement arcades.
In 1981, George Wilson took a temporary job at Cain’s Amusements in Herne Bay, Kent. He had recently completed the Documentary Photography course at Newport, then led by David Hurn, and moved to Kent with his partner, Gill.
Wilson spent two seasons calling prize bingo at Cain’s. The job placed him among the people he photographed: those working behind the counters, regular customers passing the time and families arriving from the beach.
The photographs capture the life of the arcade. Prize bingo players sit beneath illuminated signs; children and adults gather around fruit machines and punchball games; an elderly woman sits down with a cup of tea. Wilson frequently turns his attention away from the person playing and towards those watching, waiting or talking nearby.
Photo © George Wilson, all rights reserved.
Wilson came to Newport after more than 20 years in employment. In his published account for the Newport Forty Years On project, he listed work as a laboratory technician, road manager, postman and telephone engineer among the jobs he had held before studying photography.
Wilson recalled:
“I came to photography later than most. I had worked in different jobs for more than twenty years before applying to the Documentary Photography course at Newport. Photography had always been there in the background, something I felt pulled towards but never followed through until the opportunity finally came up. I was fortunate to get a place on the course, which was led by David Hurn at the time.
“The photographs in this series were made while I was working at Cain’s, the amusement arcade on the seafront in Herne Bay. I spent two summers there as a bingo caller and the job gave me a natural way in. I was part of the place rather than looking at it from a distance. I got to know the people, the little routines that shaped the day, the quieter moments, and the busier spells when families came in from the beach.”
Newport’s Documentary Photography course encouraged photographers to work closely and consistently with their subjects. At Cain’s, Wilson’s employment provided both access and time. He was present through the quieter parts of the working day as well as the summer rush.
In another account, Wilson described Cain’s as a “small community”. That description is borne out across the photographs. Individual pictures concentrate on a player, caller or customer, but the larger series records the relationships between them and the shared activity taking place around the machines.
Photo © George Wilson, all rights reserved.
The amusement arcade brought different forms of seaside leisure into the same building. Prize bingo attracted an older clientele, while electronic games, fruit machines and physical challenges such as the punchball machine drew younger players and spectators.
Wilson did not separate these groups into distinct stories. His photographs move between generations and activities, recording people at work, on holiday or filling time during an ordinary day in Herne Bay.
“What interested me was never the noise or the novelty. It was the everyday side of the place. People on holiday, people working, people passing the time. I was not trying to make a grand point with these photographs. I wanted to record what was in front of me in a direct and honest way. I was never particularly interested in the games or the machines — for me, it was always about the people.”
Photo © George Wilson, all rights reserved.
The photographs resist the simplified image of the seaside arcade as a brightly lit escape. Cain’s was also a place of employment, repetition and waiting. Wilson’s position allowed him to photograph both the attraction of the games and the ordinary work required to keep the arcade running.
Wilson continued working in commercial, industrial and documentary photography after leaving Cain’s. He and Gill established a business in 1983, undertaking work for industrial and agricultural clients alongside Wilson’s independently produced photographs of schools, hospitals and communities.
He also continued photographing the British coast. His later exhibitions included black-and-white work concerned with the less romantic aspects of seaside towns and Postcards from the Coast, a series of colour digital prints that questioned familiar representations of coastal life.
The Cain’s negatives remained largely out of public view until a postgraduate researcher at Canterbury Christ Church University began examining and digitising them.
Photo © George Wilson, all rights reserved.
Photo © George Wilson, all rights reserved.
The wider George Wilson Collection contains more than 450 arcade photographs and became part of the South East Archive of Seaside Photography at Canterbury Christ Church University in 2016. The digitised collection has subsequently supported research into arcade culture, coastal leisure and the communities that formed around these spaces.
In March 2017, Canterbury Christ Church University researcher Alan Meades presented Wilson’s photographs at the Stanford Humanities Center as part of a lecture on the social history of the British amusement arcade. The work was considered alongside Stanford University’s collection of American arcade photographs by Ira Nowinski, providing two accounts of arcade culture made in different social and geographical settings.
In March 2019, Arcade Tales: The George Wilson Collection opened the Daphne Oram Gallery at Canterbury Christ Church University. Curated by Karen Shepherdson, the exhibition brought Wilson’s photographs together with research, a specially made arcade game and a documentary film about the photographer.
The work returned to Herne Bay in August 2024 for Tales from the Arcade at Beach Creative, presented in partnership with Canterbury Christ Church University. The exhibition placed Wilson’s photographs close to the location in which they were made and accompanied a programme examining the arcade history of East Kent.
In January 2025, Arcade Tales published a 62-page book of Wilson’s Cain’s photographs following the Herne Bay exhibition, with proceeds supporting Beach Creative.
Photo © George Wilson, all rights reserved.
Photo © George Wilson, all rights reserved.
Photo © George Wilson, all rights reserved.
In 2026, British Culture Archive licensed four photographs from Wilson’s arcade series for Video Games & Music: La musique dont vous êtes le héros at the Philharmonie de Paris.
Running from 2nd April to 1st November 2026, the exhibition examines the relationship between video games and music, from early electronic sound to contemporary orchestral scores. Its displays combine playable games with consoles, instruments, artworks, photographs and audiovisual material.
Wilson’s photographs contribute a specifically British account of arcade culture to that history. They show video games alongside prize bingo, fruit machines, seafront trade and the different generations that used the arcade. The images place the technology within the working life of Cain’s and among the people for whom the arcade was a job, a meeting place or part of a day at the coast.
Photo © George Wilson, all rights reserved.
Photo © George Wilson, all rights reserved.
The George Wilson Print Collection is available exclusively through British Culture Archive. Featuring a selection of photographs taken inside a Herne Bay amusement arcade in the early 1980s, the collection offers a rare and intimate look at British seaside culture.
These limited edition prints form part of BCA’s ongoing commitment to preserving and presenting socially rooted documentary photography from across the UK.
Originally published 14th February 2022. Revised August 2026.
