New forms – edge

Great Yarmouth

Great Yarmouth is many things. A port and town grown on an old spit across the mouth of what during Roman times had been the Great Estuary. It has many facets, the historic centre and old port, the city wall, the modern port and the Pleasure beach. The splendid Edwardian Promenade is the longest in Britain, built at a time when coastal resorts were taking hold as destinations for the rich, many remnants are still visible behind modern facades which tell of a different era – the faded glitz of the arcades and casinos from the mid to late 20th century, and the slow descent back into poverty under successive terrible governments making largely empty misguided or nonsensical decisions about how support and rebuild the economy of an area that relies so heavily on seasonal trades.

It is still a place full of colour and a depth of meaning, the urban landscape echoing its visual past from Turner and Crome, entertainment, the fishing industry, herring girls, the fleets that launched here. It is a place that has always been special to me, somewhere we went as a treat when I was small, somewhere I still go and just watch and breath in the essence of a place over time, a maritime urban ghost of itself – a shifting canvas built on shifting sands.

These are intended to pay for a book of the full collection. More prints available soon.