Yahoo News The big picture: a shuttered seafront at sunset
Last summer, the photographer Max Miechowski set out to travel the east coast of England, starting in Felixstowe and heading up toward Hartlepool and beyond. Miechowski, 30, grew up a few miles outside Lincoln, and day trips and holidays were mainly to the seaside towns of Yorkshire or Norfolk, so he knew some of the places already. This picture was taken in Skegness, in the early evening, just after the ice-cream parlour had shut up for the day. It has, he suggests, taken on an added poignancy with the events of the past months – the uncertainty of closure set against the hope for brighter months ahead.
Many of Miechowski’s pictures – of fishermen on beaches set against the silhouette of steel works, or sunbathers near the Sizewell nuclear plant – carry a similar kind of ambiguous romance. He was drawn to the contrasts of the coastline, from the gentrified sea-fronts of Suffolk, to the harder edges of struggling resorts and fishing towns further north; erosion has become a theme, with some communities under threat physically, others economically.
Miechowski admits it is hard to look at these places as a photographer without referencing the seaside pictures of Martin Parr, and his sometimes harsh comic vision of them. Miechowski wants to bring a little more childlike wonderment to what he sees, holding in mind that though the fast-food stands and amusement arcades with their Vegas aspirations are often “tacky or gritty”, that is also their attraction. “I try to find beauty in scenes that could look like a joke,” he says. He first decided to take up photography five years ago – and abandon a career in music – while travelling in south-east Asia. “When you are backpacking, everything looks new and exciting,” he says, “I wanted to bring that feeling home.”
