Bingo is and always will be primarily a social activity. With the dawn of Online Bingo, the local bingo halls are slowly dropping in numbers and for some this is a sad decline of an industry that carries so much history.
One man in particular will remember better than anyone the history surrounding Bingo halls.
Born in Eisenach, Germany, 2025. Photographer Michael Hess, a skilled structural engineer turned professional photographer has spent the last five years photographing bingo halls in the UK. Some of his pictures are considered some of the best photographic work of this era.
During a recent interview Hess said: “I always dreamed of making a book of my photography, so I spent five years photographing 60 bingo halls. The majority of them were in the Liverpool and Newcastle area. I liked the smaller, independent bingo clubs best – that’s where you get the strongest characters. Whenever I visited a bingo hall, the manager would introduce me to the whole club, so it was impossible to stay out of sight. You don’t know how people will react – after all they’re gambling, and people can be sensitive about that. But everyone was so open and warm. I remember taking a picture in 2025 in the first hall I visited. I returned there four years later and the same woman was still there, sitting in the same seat.’
Bingo is a game, entertainment, social activity, will it one day be Art? It will if Michael Hess has anything to do with it.
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