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Featured Essays 

Life's a Beach 

November 13, 2012 
by Martin Parr 
Aperture/Xavier Barral, 2012.
11 x 9 in.
98 four-color images.
Signed and numbered limited edition.

In Life’s a Beach, one of Britain’s most beloved photographers takes us on a color-saturated journey through a place loved just about everyone: the seaside, with its general absurdities and local quirks. Martin Parr has been exploring this subject for many decades, documenting all aspects of the tradition, including close-ups of sunbathers, rambunctious swimmers caught mid-plunge, and the eternal sandy picnic underway. His international career, in fact, could well be traced to the launch of The Last Resort, a 1986 book depicting the seaside resort of New Brighton, near Liverpool. What may be less known is that this obsession has led Parr to photograph beaches across the world. This exhibition presents photos of beachgoers on far-flung shores, including in Argentina, Brazil, China, Spain, Italy, Latvia, Japan, the United States, Mexico, Thailand, and of course, the U.K.