By the seaside, by the sea

“Seasideness” is an odd word but it does its job. I’ve toyed vaguely with thoughts about the pull the seaside exerts on us for years without really getting anywhere and it has taken a recent chance encounter with David Jarratt’s article of that name to point out the detail I wasn’t managing to get to by myself. ”Seasideness” is essentially about what constitutes “the sense of place experienced by visitors to a traditional British seaside resort.” The challenge for me now as someone who has recently settled in the seaside town of Scarborough on England’s east coast is this; to find images which attempt to describe that range of particular qualities which make being by the sea so appealing, whether it be to people like my wife, Margret, and me who have moved here to live or to those who come here as visitors. A sense of place is a theme I’ve always tried to position at the centre of my photography. These images represent the first tentative steps in what I suspect may well be a long and fascinating journey.