Sun, surf, sea. The beach is the place where land meets water and water meets land, the primordial spot from which we came, and to which we return, season after season, all around the world. There is something deeply restorative about soaking up rays of sun while listening to the relentless pound of the waves as they crash upon shore, while denizens frolic in the water and on the sand.
Martin Parr knows this world well and his photographs of beach life have become part of our visual lexicon ever since he began shooting back in the 1970s. Following on the release of his limited edition of Life’s A Beach (Aperture) is the mini-version of the book, a beautifully produced object in its own right. As Parr notes in the foreword, “In the United Kingdom, one is never more than seventy-five miles away from the coast. With this much shoreline, it’s not surprising that there is a strong British tradition of photography by the seaside. American photographers may have given birth to Street photography; but in the UK, we have the beach. Perhaps the natural outcome is Beach photography. Here people can relax, be themselves, and show off all those traces of mildly eccentric British behavior.”
After publishing The Last Resort (1986), a book depicting the seaside resort of New Brighton, Parr expanded his travels and went around the globe, documenting beach life in its many forms. From Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, the United States, and the UK to China, Japan, Thailand, Latvia, Italy, and Spain, Parr took his camera and aimed it at the sublime and the strange. “You can read a lot about a country by looking at its beaches: across cultures, the beach is that rare public space in which all absurdities and quirky national behaviors can be found,” Parr illuminates.
In Goa, India, we see a white cow happily give Parr the eye as tourists and residents commingle effortlessly with the holiest of animals. In Hua Hin, Thailand we see a group of six young Muslim women posing for each other, only their feet bare as they stand on the surf, taking photographs to remember this moment. In Brighton UK, we see an older gentleman from the back as he holds the side of a breaker and makes his way into the water. He wears a hood, swimming trunks, gloves, and big blue flippers, his foot stepping forth with resolution, a mission to be served.
The more idiosyncratic the image, the more familiar the foreign becomes as each image reflects back to us how normal it has become to publicly display some of our most private selves. The beach is the place where we show our bodies to the world, and here we witness the incredibly variety of the human form. For al our assumptions about beauty, the beach is the place where we let it all hang out, all the flesh ripening under the sun’s rays, aged to perfection.
We witness innovative displays of sunbathing, be it a woman in a bikini bottom who covers her nipples with stones, or the woman whose eyes are guarded but whose lips are perfectly painted orange. We see the fit and the flabby, and everything in between, everyone in their own world yet on display. Life is a Beach, indeed. It reminds us that the best things in life are to be as we are: one with the earth, yet part of a larger space where we are part of a larger group, whether it is our own or it is one we are visiting from the moment. The more things change, the more they remain the same and the beach reminds us of this. As the seasons turn, we return time and again to the place where water meets earth.
Martin Parr: Life’s a Beach will be on display at Aperture Gallery, New York, now through July 3, 2013.
Miss Rosen
