This page was originally called English Littoral, but has been simplified to English Beaches for web clarity
littoral a & n 1 a. Of or on the shore. 2. n. Region lying along the shore. . . OED.
English Beaches
black white landscape photography
My black and white photography of English Beaches started in 1975 at Watchet. This was quickly followed by work at Kilve Beach. I was fascinated with from my first sight of it as a child looking for fossils. These Kilve Beach photographs were the first in what is now a very popular subject. I have plans to return to Kilve with a 10x8" large format camera
Severn Beach is at the end of a tiny suburban railway running from Bristol in north Somerset. A feature of Severn Beach is, or was, an abandoned swimming pool and amusement area, in the 1970s already desolate. Severn Beach ceased to be a weekend resort for Bristol as travel became easier and toxic effluent from nearby industry poisoned the area
Looking at a pile of English Black and White photography magizines in June 2007 I was struck by the number of people currently making square black and white pictures on English beaches. These, from 1970s, are the first ones in this genre. Viewed from 2008, thirty years later, these images still remind me of the desolate beaches I haunted as a child These beaches were re-visted during an introspective period in the late 1970s. I made a new series of prints of them in the mid 1980s, which I still treasure
Several of these English Littoral images were shown as part of “Art and the Sea” at the University of Southampton and the Institute of Contemporary Art in the London in 1981 and 1982