The North East and a new project

I’ve spent the last week up in the North East catching up with family and friends – which also gave me a chance to start taking photographs for my new project “Seaside”. Britain’s coastal towns and villages have been in decline now for many years – mainly due to people shunning holidays in the UK for abroad – and also the decline of traditional industries, such as fishing.

As I was in Middlesbrough, I spent a couple of hours in the two coastal towns of Redcar and Saltburn which are two places at slight opposites. Redcar has been made famous (or infamous) for two reasons recently – the beach there was used in the filming of “Atonement” and it’s also the location of the Corus steel plant which has recently been mothballed due to lack of steel orders – with the effect of massive redundancies in an area already hit by high unemployment and few new opportunities for work.

I decided to start my new project “Seaside” here – following somewhat in the footsteps of photographers such as Martin Parr – but looking at a different angle. Over the next couple of years (yes this is a long term project!) I plan to visit as many resorts on the coasts of the England as I can covering at least 4-5 different resorts on the North, East, South and West coastlines. I want to try and capture some of the essence of the resorts and present the decline of local businesses alongside the beauty of these locations. Given that these images will be taken over a period of time, I’d like to try and revisit these places at different times of the year to capture the differences in them over the changing seasons. I’d like to think that maybe these images will change peoples perceptions of these be places – and maybe get them to visit for a weekend or a day and make a positive impact on them.The first couple of images are from Redcar taken looking towards the Corus steelworks from the beach.

The beach at Redcar is truly massive! Unfortunately, I didn’t have a very wide angled lens with me, so I couldn’t fully do it justice – but it was worth being sandblasted walking along the beach to get the image above showing the contrast of heavy industry against people horse-riding on the beach.

Apparently, the “Mungle Jungle” was a fun fair, although these days, it’s looking a little less fun! I liked the contrast here between the run-down building and the billboard advertising UKIP. Interesting there are a large number of projects to try and stimulate growth in these types of areas and some of the funding for these does come from Europe. Maybe we are wasting millions by being in the EU, but there is also a positive side in the number of grants and development funds available from Europe to help areas such as Redcar… but certainly parties such as UKIP and the BNP prey on peoples fears of Europe by only highlighting the negative points of arguments.

Looking towards Redcar’s boating lake.

And the donkeys… no English seaside scene would be complete without them!

Moving down the coast to Saltburn, which is a great example of a Victorian seaside town. It’s pier is one of the best in Britain and with it’s funicular railway is a great example of engineering. Saltburn, with it’s pier has the advantage of having a focal point and the difference between these two towns is obvious. Saltburn does look a little run-down in places – but also has the signs of businesses surviving – local cafes and bistros cater for tourists and the railway station is literally a stones throw from the top of the cliffs and beach, in the centre of the town.

As soon as I’ve had the chance, I’ll put the photographs in a gallery with the rest. As I said, this will an ongoing project – and at the moment, I’m not 100% sure of it’s direction – I just know where I want to start – which is always a good thing to know!

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 8th, 2010 at 9:48 am. It is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.