A Walkway Out To Sea
This project is about documenting British pleasure piers. I am drawn to the coast as I spent a lot of my childhood at the beach, so documenting that area really fascinates me. I have photographed 6 different pleasure piers around East Anglia on 6x7 medium format film. People visit pleasure piers for different reasons, every pier is different; they have different views, atmospheres and objects. I have avoided the cliché image of a pier and the seaside which typically shows a perfect, clean, tidy and pleasant vista. Piers are perceived to be the place for British holidays, however I have shown in these photos the real, natural parts of the pier that you don’t normally think about. These images show how they can actually be, boring, untidy, dangerous, and unwelcoming. Some are falling apart and others are not being regularly used, nevertheless some can be in perfect condition. The photos portray human absence in order to get a feel for the architecture and objects on the pier, this makes you contemplate why the objects are there and if they are used. I have mainly been inspired by Simon Roberts series ‘Peirdom’ and ‘We English’.
