As 2023 drew to a close I found myself reflecting on my photography over the past year. It was a year of great changes for me personally – moving house, birth of daughter, health issue, etc. – which limited the time I was able to give to photography, particularly in the last couple of months.
I was quite active during last summer, however, when I ventured regularly to various places on the English coast to stroll and do a combination of street and beach photography. My hope is to develop this slow-paced coastal exploration into a fully-fledged project over the coming years, which will entail visiting a much broader selection of seaside towns and villages. Thus far, I’ve focused on places within a few hours drive of where I live (near London).
Why the seaside?
The coastal theme interests me for a few reasons. Firstly, because prior to leaving to live in Azerbaijan in 2014 (returning in 2022), I had rarely been to places along the English coast, and yet the UK is essentially a large island where you’re never more than 70 miles from the sea, apparently. So, it seemed a good idea to begin discovering my own country by familiarising myself with the coastline.
Secondly, I simply enjoy being by the sea, with its salty air, recreational and relaxing atmosphere, and soothing sounds of seagulls chirping and waves crashing. Typically alive with activity and aglow with interesting light, wherever I go with a camera in the world I’m always drawn to the seaside.
And thirdly, as I recently heard the acclaimed Martin Parr say in a Youtube video interview, there is a long tradition of British documentary photographers (street being linked to documentary) heading to coastal towns rather than big cities, as opposed to American street photographers, for instance. Martin Parr himself is a great example.
On film & failure
Throughout these coastal visits in 2023, I of course took lots of photos, the vast majority of which I quickly deleted. Street photography is after all 99.9% failure according to the brilliant Alex Webb, a notion that has really inspired me to never give up when I’m out and about and having little success. I’ll write more about that in a future post.
But I did take some photos that I was quite happy with, such as those presented in this post. They include scenes from the likes of Margate, Weymouth, Brighton and Weston-super-Mare – classic English seaside towns replete with once-grand but now run-down architecture, vast Victorian-era piers, old-fashioned ice-cream parlours, neon-lit arcades and traditional fish-and-chip shops. Mostly, they were taken on Kodak Portra 400 film stock (I’ll write about why I shoot with film or digitally in a future post).
As mentioned, next summer I’m looking forward to exploring further afield and adding more pictures to the project.
In the meantime – more photos:
