By Sean Sheehan
Markéta Luskačová went to the seaside, on the north-east coast of England, in 1976 and ‘77 to visit a friend. Returning the following year as part of a group project to photograph the north-east, she knew the seaside would be her chosen subject area. Now, forty years later, some of her pictures – they are photographic gems – have been published by RRB Photobooks
Most were taken at Whitley Bay, a popular destination for working-class families on Tyneside. Money was not plentiful, foreign holidays were unaffordable, but Whitley Bay provided the space for children to play and adults to take time out from their hard working lives. Luskačová remembers the cafes that sold boiling water for those who, to save the expense of buying tea for the whole family, brought their teapots and teabags with them (one photo shows a barefooted teenager carrying a teapot for this purpose).
There is a wealth of detail in the photographs that reflects the holidaymakers’ lives. Some children have swim suits but leisure wear is non-existent for adults who, when the weather permits, improvise by rolling up shirt sleeves, draping jackets over deckchairs or taking off shoes. Cardigans, jackets and coats are not left at home. Many families are there on daytrips so hand- and shopping bags are filled with necessities; prams and pushchairs are ubiquitous.
It is, though, the human landscape that Luskačová is responding to and her camera warms to the hardy hearts of families seeking temporary respite from a harsh world of work and school. Some find a vicarious joy in their young ones’ glee while adults feeling care-free enjoy an occasional frolic on the sand. But it is mostly left to the children and their pet dogs to give uninhibited expression to the freedom offered by the wide open space of the sandy bay.
The monochrome pictures have a gritty and grey quality but Luskačová displays a tremendous warmth and empathy that is characteristically missing from the work of the eponymous photographer of the Martin Parr Foundation which exhibited the photographs earlier this year. People are content to face her camera without selfie-style posing, suggesting a friendly engagement, and there are also complex group compositions that bring to mind Tony Ray-Jones. There is a fascinating shot of over a dozen people that breaks down into groups of twos and threes: some gazing at something ‘off stage’; a couple chatting over a baby; a man in a hat absorbed in a newspaper. Another wonderful group picture, reproduced on the book’s cover, is beguilingly enigmatic – only the baby in the pram rises to the holiday occasion with blitheness – and leaves the viewer wondering what on earth is going on in the minds of the adults.
Sean Sheehan
Markéta Luskačová : By the Sea : Photographs from the North East, 1976-1980
RRB Photobooks
Blue Cloth Hardcover
20x28cm, 132 pages
Edition of 600
Including 100 copies with signed and limited silver-gelatin print
RRP £60 / £225 with print
https://www.rrbphotobooks.com/
