With summer beckoning like a mermaid in a sailor’s wet dream, the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich has turned its main gallery over to an exhibition of photographs taken at the seaside resorts of Britain. Four major names in coastal snapping are represented: Martin Parr, Tony Ray-Jones, David Hurn and Simon Roberts. Parr, the absolute king of the cold chips on a cold pier scene, has been commissioned by the RMM to head out to beaches within a pebble’s throw of London and document modern seaside life, while the other three are represented by photos taken across the last 60 years.
It starts with Ray-Jones, a man inspired in the 1960s by American street photographers to capture Brits in the great outdoors. His pictures are filled with huddles of holidaymakers going through the British Seaside™ motions. They eat picnics, wear silly hats and sit in stripy deckchairs. And in common with the people pictured throughout the exhibition, they’re nearly always fully dressed – it’s not all that balmy in Blightly, after all.
The photos by Parr and Hurn continue this bathers, butties and bleak promenades theme, while Roberts offers – quite literally – a different perspective, capturing the panoramic sweep of beachy landscapes dotted with tiny doll-like people.
Fittingly for an exhibition about going on a jolly, it’s bloody good fun to walk around. Seagulls caw and waves crash via a continuous audio recording, you can take a rest on a deckchair or bench nabbed from the seafront, and there’s a cinema screen hidden in a beach hut to watch films about the photographers in.
But the best thing is how this celebration of quirky Britannia skillfully avoids becoming some kind of BNP publicity drive. Parr’s modern photos, and several of the historic ones, show how a trip to the sea is beloved of people from all backgrounds, such as celebrations for the last day of the Hindu month of Shraavana at Clacton-on-Sea. Nostalgia this is not – we all love to bruise our feet running down the shingle for a dip.