How nice to see Wales At The Seaside, Jon Pountney's current exhibition at Gallery Ten in Cardiff, getting national coverage on the BBC site. Pountney certainly isn't the first photographer to have felt the lure of the sea, but he has a personal connection to the coast, having grown up near Filey and Scarborough. It's the "nostalgic confection" of seaside towns that pulls him in.
Talking to Emma Garland for Another Mag, Pountney expanded on the attraction, describing the coast as "a metaphorical and literal edgeland" and explaining that "all life is there". Part of the appeal appears to be the inherent surrealism of seaside resort signage and scenery (much as US roadside architecture fascinated John Margolies), but Pountney's also "interested in real people and all the stuff they bring with them". That makes the exhibition quite different from the pictures collected in his COVID fanzine, in which people are conspicuous by their almost complete absence.
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