The Great British Seaside, National Maritime Museum

Photo: Detail from Brighton Beach, 2007

Opening in March 2018, The Great British Seaside: Photography from the 1960s to the present is a major new exhibition exploring Britain’s relationship with the seaside through the lenses of the nation’s best loved photographers, Martin Parr, Tony Ray-Jones, David Hurn and Simon Roberts.

Many of us in Britain look back with fondness on memories of paddles in the sea and picnics on the promenade. Yet the seaside can also be a place of faded glory and acute deprivation. These tensions have provided fertile ground for documentary photographers who have sought to capture the ambiguities and eccentricities that define a day at the British seaside.

Read an article in The British Journal of  Photography about the show, Celebrating the seaside at the National Maritime Museum.

Discover the lives and careers of Martin Parr, Tony Ray-Jones, David Hurn, and Simon Roberts and hear in their own words what draws them to the seaside, Photographers at the seaside.

Buy the accompanying book here, The Great British Seaside: Photography from the 1960s to the Present. Published to accompany the 2018 National Maritime Museum exhibition The Great British Seaside: Photography from the 1960s to the Present, this book showcases over 100 photographs, including material from each of the photographers’ archival collections, newly commissioned works, and never-before-seen images.