When Peter Dench was 11, he tried his first beer. Both his parents worked at Devenish Brewery in Weymouth, a seaside town in Dorset, England. Once every couple of weeks, Dench’s father would receive a crate of bottled beer, and if Peter did his chores, there was a chance he would be given a bottle. Otherwise, he would get up in the morning before everyone else and finish off what the adults didn’t drink from the previous evening. It marked the beginning of his participation in the world of alcohol.
Enlivened by this contrast, Peter Dench began his 10-year project to document the English. “England Uncensored,” shown at Perpignan, France, this summer during the Visa Pour l’Image Festival, is a selection from that project. Unabashedly English — with a French edit and a German influence.
England has never exactly been glamorous. Many of the English still insist on embarrassing themselves, wearing laughable clothing, eating terrible food and behaving inappropriately. England Uncensored is a laugh-out-loud romp through this often badly behaved nation, a comprehensive portrait of the first decade of 21st century England. It is not an idealized brochure of a green and pleasant land, but the truth, warts and all.
