Phil Poole Photography

In pre-war Britain the influence of modernist architecture was minimal but in the post-war period British architects and developers embraced the movement. This style is evident from the early 1950s and by the mid-point of the decade it came to be known as ‘New Brutalism’ or simply ‘Brutalism,’ derived from Le Corbusier's ‘béton brut’, French for raw concrete.

Almost from inception the movement had its detractors and the chorus of criticism increased from the early 1980s. Anglia Square, Norwich’s major Brutalist development, has also come in for extensive criticism and after a long period of decline is now the focus of redevelopment plans. With this in mind I decided to document what remains of the development in a photobook.

The Anglia Square complex was built in an area that had been heavily bombed in 1942 and after the war was designated for redevelopment. Construction began in 1966 and was completed in the early 1970s. Additional phases, including a motel, were planned and designed but never built. Constructed for Her Majesty's Stationery Office (HMSO) which was relocated from London, Sovereign House was pivotal to the complex. While it is the undoubted architectural highlight of the development, the Odeon Cinema was also a bold 1960s design and state of the art when built.

Ill-conceived, often over-zealous urban planning and inadequate maintenance set the scene for the eventual fall from grace of showpiece Brutalist developments in Britain but a catalyst was also the loss of inner city jobs. For Anglia Square, the closure of Sovereign House in 1996 on HMSO privatisation significantly reduced the footfall in the retail and leisure facilities. The development never recovered from this blow. And, as with many Brutalist developments, a lack of investment exacerbated decline and encouraged vandalism.

In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in Brutalism and I hope that this increased awareness will help to protect what remains of the controversial architectural legacy of New Brutalism in Britain.

See Phil’s recently published book Old Brutalism which documents the Anglia Square Brutalist development in Norwich, England (available from The Book Hive bookshop and Anteros Arts Foundation in Norwich).

Looking for clues to the state of the nation as we go through the the biggest political change in a generation, I’ve focused on what Iggy Pop called the “city’s ripped backsides” - inner city areas geographically close to the economically vibrant parts of towns and cities but far removed in context.

Most of my life has been spent living in UK cities, including Birmingham where I grew up and east London where I lived for much of my adult life.

They are constantly changing, shaped by social and economic forces and planning cycles.  In recent years, globalisation and online retailing have taken their toll, ripping the commercial heart out of inner cities as shops and factories closed and jobs disappeared.

Now well past their sell-by date, 1960s ‘Brutalist’ concrete under-passes, tower blocks and other exhausted elements of our urban infrastructure legacy decay with little prospect of regeneration.

Inhabited by the impoverished and people on the margins of society, these twilight areas provide insights into a range of disturbing home-grown problems that have nothing to do with Brussels and won’t be cured by Brexit.

This is an ongoing, long-term project.

The images in this gallery are taken from a combination of photo shoot collaborations with creative artists based at Norwich University of the Arts in Norwich, England. Like the portraits in the 1920s/30s Female Portrait Aesthetic gallery, also on this site, they were shot in black and white mostly using a single continuous lighting source, deliberately generating strong shadows and using a barn door attachment to accentuate the effect.

In all of these shoots I was looking to generate evidence of ‘attitude’ from the various models, combined in some cases with a retro feel. They were shot using a combination of digital and 35mm film which I scanned, the latter used to generate more grain and texture in the images to accentuate certain effects. In some cases this was enhanced by using a low camera angle or close cropping.

I am open to collaborations or commissions to further develop this body of work.

These images are taken from photoshoot collaborations with the Norwich-based fashion designer Rebekah Pledger and textile designer Lily Winterbone, recreating the aesthetics of 1920s/30s female portraiture.

I used high contrast lighting to create strong modelling with deliberate facial shadows and shot against a dead black background.

We set out to recreate iconic transformations along the lines of Dora Maar and Claude Cahun amongst others, Rebekah being keen to gain a more personal understanding of the emotion behind their art.

In terms of technique, the images give a nod to the photographic styles of Lee Miller and Man Ray.

I am open to additional collaborations or commissions to further develop this body of work.

This is a selection of images from a collaboration with the talented visual artists Stephanie Kyek and Moyses Gomez.

We set out to recreate the visual aesthetics of Film Noir cinema with high contrast, stark lighting effects, deep shadows and the use of so-called ‘cookies’ to shape the light and shadows.

Both Stephanie and Moyses use moving images as a key element of their work and Film Noir was a technique used to create atmosphere in many American post-war crime movies.

I have also added a more playful image of Stephanie from the end of the shoot, messy hair and a big smile.

I am open to collaborations or commissions to further develop this body of work.

In December 1991 the Soviet Union dissolved and the constituent republics formed new independent states. At the time I was travelling there frequently on business and continued to do so over the next 10 or so years. This collection of 35 mm black and white images records Russia in the initial years after the USSR broke up and documents some of the changes that took place in this tumultuous period.

Rampant capitalism replaced the dead hand of centralised state planning and income differentials exploded. Oligarchs enriched themselves from the rapid privatisation of state assets while pensioners and others on fixed incomes saw their standard of living plummet, eroded by rapid inflation and currency depreciation.

Muscovites queued for hours to get their first taste of a Big Mac while babushkas sold whatever they could to eke out a meagre existence. Those in power lined their pockets.

I am still sorting through my collection of black and white negatives from this period, most of which have never been printed, and will add additional images to the site over time.

One of the benefits of having time on my hands during the Lockdown is that I have been able to use some of the old film cameras in my collection, albeit with a limited subject range.

These images were all taken on a vintage 1960 ‘Moscow 5’ folding camera which is a Soviet copy of the German pre-war Zeiss Ikonta.

The camera uses 120 film in either 6x9 or 6x6 formats. It has a coupled rangefinder and a 4 element Tessar-type, single coated lens. It is a strange, in some ways difficult, camera to use, particularly because the shutter release is on the left hand side rather than the normal right hand side which takes a lot of getting used to.

However, the Industar 105mm F3.5 lens is sharp and contrasty from about F5.6 and the copy that I bought from Ukraine on ebay is in good condition with no light leaks from the bellows or through the camera back.

All the shots loaded here were taken using the camera on 6x6 format, giving a slight telephoto effect from the 105mm lens. I used Ilford FP4 film, developed in ID 11 for the recommended time and then scanned on an Epson V800.

That’s the year my Rolleiflex Automat 3.5 Series twin lens reflex camera was made in the western part of a divided Germany, still recovering from war.

According to some online sources the Zeiss-Opton 75mm Tessar F3.5 taking lens fitted to the camera was not as reliable as the prewar Rollei lenses and suffered from quality control problems. And, of course, this lens was superseded by the faster and now legendary Zeiss Planar F2.8 taking lens, almost a stop faster than the one fitted to mine.

Anyway. Having bought this rather cheaply some years ago on ebay, as part of a plan to keep myself from going stir crazy through Lockdown and home schooling for my eight year old daughter, I got it out from the back of the camera cupboard, blew off the dust and fitted a roll of Ilford FP4.

I have been pleasantly surprised by the results, particularly the way the combination of the lens and film renders skin tones.

The two portraits of my youngest daughter Mikayla lit by window light are nicely sharp but not obtrusively so. The second portrait was taken using a so-called Rolleinar attachment on the front of the lens. Effectively adding an additional element that reduces the close focusing distance without adding to the required exposure. Clever.

Outside it also performs decently and, although only single coated, the lens seems to handle flare pretty well.

It’s also a pleasure to use. Particularly now I’ve replaced the dark viewing screen with an old screen from a Mamiya RB67 that I cut down to size.

All in all, I don’t see the Rollei going to the back of the camera cupboard any time soon!

How do you sum up a life in a single image or sculpture? That is the question faced by descendants in countries where the tradition is to put a portrait on graves in memoriam.

This practice was widespread in the Former Soviet Union and continues to be in successor countries, including Ukraine. If it was a long life, should that image look back to youth or represent old age? Should it be a lone portrait or include a spouse, reference life-time achievements or life-long interests?

In Memoriam considers this twist on traditional portraiture; a portrait chosen for perpetuity. Shot in Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa, Kherson and Poltava in Ukraine over an 18 month period it surveys a range of approaches taken to solving this dilemma since the early years of the 20th Century. Through its imagery it also touches on important historical themes by documenting funerary art, including the impact of the Holocaust on Ukraine and Stalin’s enforced mass starvation in the 1930s.

In Memoriam photo book is available from Amazon UK

It was my intention to continue to develop this body of work but this project was interrupted first by Covid lockdown and then by the tragic Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In the June 2016 EU referendum, 19 constituencies voted by more than 70% to leave compared to a UK-wide average of 52%. Nine of these were on or near the east coast of England including 4 of the top 5.

I believe that in part this was a protest vote from an area of the country which has suffered economically since the late ‘60s as a result of a steep decline in tourism and the collapse of traditional industries like fishing.

While London and the Home Counties have prospered over this period, the coastal towns in eastern England have mostly stagnated suffering from under-investment, inadequate transport links and poor job prospects. They now contain some of the most deprived areas of the UK.

In addition to being a protest vote my initial thoughts to explain this overwhelming preference to leave also include a reaction to recent immigration from the EU and the Middle East and a greater sense of “Englishness” than in most major UK conurbations where the population has been cosmopolitan for much longer.

Leaving for a Dream is an ongoing project that will investigate and visually document these and other contributory factors behind the high vote to leave in east coast towns like Great Yarmouth, Grimsby, Skegness, Clacton and others and consider how they will fare in the future.

When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991 the shock waves had a huge and lasting impact on successor countries, including Ukraine where I have travelled extensively.

The economies of most of these new countries went into free fall. Severe disruption followed as trade and commercial links between the entities of the Former Soviet Union unravelled and a market economy vied with the remnants of the defunct centrally planned system.

After almost 30 years since these Soviet Republics became independent states, vestiges of the old communist world are still very much in evidence, particularly outside the capital cities.

This series of images looks at aspects of this ongoing post-Soviet transition from the vantage point of provincial towns like Kherson in southern Ukraine where they were shot.

They were taken during the summer of 2019 and feature quiet images shot in Soviet era apartment complexes and on street corners. They mostly do not feature people but allude to their presence. This is an ongoing project that I intend to continue to shoot in other small towns in Ukraine once Covid-related travel restrictions are lifted but it has been further delayed by the tragic Russian invasion of Ukraine.

These images were taken during a visit to Cairo with my young son in the early ‘90s.

The central Cairo souk is a vibrant, colourful market place selling a bewildering range of goods and produce.

While we were there a disturbance broke out and although I never understood the full story it seems that there was a series of robberies and the police were on heightened alert.

The problem was not as bad then as it has been intervening years but there had already been terrorist attacks on areas frequented by foreign tourists and police had been deployed to protect them.

The final image in the series was not taken in the souk but near the pyramids at Giza, also showing an armed mounted tourist policeman complete with camel.

The photos were taken on Fuji 200 film using a Minolta X 700 camera, mostly with a 50mm standard lens and scanned using an Epson V800 scanner.

A chapel once served the Anglo Saxon manor and hamlet of Sugenhoe that appeared in the Domesday book of 1086. To the west of the chapel was a moated manorial castle.

There is now no physical trace of either. The chapel is simply marked with a cross and an explanatory board set in a small copse by the side of a tributary road to the A12 near Ufford, Suffolk in the UK.  

I used this site as a conceptual link to explore and respond to landscape traces and memories of Anglo Saxon history in the area, including the Sutton Hoo burial ground where Anglo Saxon King Raedwald was interred and the area around a site of what is believed to have been the great hall of King Raedwald in Rendelsham Forest. 

Shot in Metro Manila and Cebu City this visual narrative takes a look inside the sprawling cemetery cities of the Philippines that in recent years have become home to hundreds of poor migrant families.

The selection of images on this site starts with a portrayal of the fading glory of ethnic Chinese mausoleums in Manila. Shots of elaborate, painstakingly maintained tombs are then followed by images showing varying degrees of decay and distress and evidence of the people now living in these cemeteries.

Economic and demographic trends have contributed to the deterioration of these once imposing necropolises. Rapid population growth and migration from rural areas have created huge pressure on urban infrastructure and poorer families have also been displaced from make-shift shanty towns by redevelopment. With nowhere else to go, many have made their homes in these vast cemetery spaces.

The images examine aspects of this unusual coexistence of the living and the dead. Whole families live in tombs and mausoleums cheek by jowl with the dead, often sleeping on the marble slabs that cover interred bodies. Goats, ducks, fighting cocks and numerous dogs and cats add to this eclectic mix. Children are born and families live out their lives in what have become surrogate mini cities housing this bizarre combination of the living and the dead.

This is an ongoing project.

Self isolate. Don’t see friends. Don’t shake hands or embrace. Socially distance. Spend more time at home and in your garden (if you have one).

Coronavirus led to the Lockdown of the UK like much of the rest of the world. Something we have never experienced before.

A government imposing rules forbidding social interaction outside a single household unit and closing businesses, schools, universities, entertainment venues and retail units in an effort to slow the spread of the virus to save lives and prevent medical resources being overrun.

Millions of employees have been furloughed while essential workers in the NHS and elsewhere battle on at the sharp end of this pandemic, taking the strain for the nation and dealing with the sadness of suffering and death first hand.

These images record empty public spaces and dwellings that for one reason or another evoke a sense of isolation. The black and white treatment only adds to the forlorn mood.

These images are part of a shoot at Cenzo Townshend’s Decoy Recording Studios in Woodbridge, Suffolk. They were taken mostly hand held with a Contax 167 MT on Ilford HP5 film.

Cenzo was awarded 'Mix Engineer of the Year' by the Music Producers Guild Awards in 2009 and 2010 and nominated again in 2016, 2017 and 2018.

Artists that have used the studio include The Maccabees, George Ezra and Ed Sheeran.

Crime is one of the seven domains that comprise the English Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), carrying a weighting of 9.3%.

According to The English Indices of Deprivation 2025 Technical Report, ‘Crime is an important feature of deprivation that has physical, financial and psychological impacts on individuals and communities.’

Many coastal towns that have experienced economic decline score highly on the Crime Domain, which captures four major categories of crime: violence, burglary, theft and criminal damage.

The images in this gallery provide evidence of low-level crime and anti-social behaviour in coastal towns through traces of their impact on the built environment.

The sequence begins with a house near the promenade in Great Yarmouth (IMD rank 56) that appears to have been transformed into a fortress.

In contrast to the cheery bright blue of the door frame, heavy security measures dominate, suggesting a persistent fear of burglary and intrusion.

This is followed by a former small hotel in Blackpool (IMD rank 38) that has either been burgled or vandalised and is now sealed with sterling board, a familiar sight in many seaside towns.

The image also signifies a root cause of decline in seaside towns: the reduction in revenue from tourism.

A building once designed to provide holiday accommodation and hospitality is now permanently closed and boarded up.

Signs of damage and repair continue in Ramsgate (IMD rank 48), where a Subway outlet has had its windows and door smashed.

The boarded frontage creates a striking contrast with the business's continued operation, illustrating the challenge of trading in an environment plagued by crime and anti-social behaviour.

Boarded windows reappear in the next two images. One shows Blackpool's Edwardian Grade II listed General Post Office (IMD rank 2), standing empty while awaiting redevelopment.

The other depicts a vacant former restaurant in Grimsby (IMD rank 365) that has been broken into.

Together, they reflect the vulnerability of underused buildings and struggling high streets in coastal towns.

In Ramsgate (IMD rank 3672), frustration surfaces more directly. A crudely painted slogan - ’Fuck Feds - expresses a raw, unfiltered response to the experience of decline and deprivation.

Unlike the previous images, where crime is inferred through physical damage, here discontent is voiced openly on marks on the urban landscape.

The following images shift attention to institutional responses. One features a large illuminated billboard advertising careers in the prison service in an area of Blackpool where employment deprivation is high (IMD rank 14).

The juxtaposition is difficult to ignore: a recruitment campaign for the penal system situated within a community facing limited employment opportunities and struggling with the impact of crime.

The next two images show the impact of crime and anti-social behaviour on public infrastructure.

In Lowestoft (IMD rank 219), public toilets have been permanently closed following repeated vandalism.

In Great Yarmouth (IMD rank 673), basketball courts near the promenade have been locked to prevent anti-social behaviour.

In both cases, the response has been to withdraw public assets from community use.

The penultimate image offers another example of this approach.

In Blackpool (IMD rank 38), a public toilet directly opposite holiday arcades and tourist amenities off Central Drive has been redesigned with prison-like architectural features intended to deter crime and misuse.

The carceral character of the structure sits uneasily within a space designed for leisure and recreation.

The sequence concludes with a stark image of a high wall topped with razor wire behind a hotel on Blackpool's promenade (IMD rank 4).

The scene resembles a secure military compound more than a holiday destination.

As an attempt to deter burglars, it is also a powerful visual reminder of the extent to which crime continues to shape both the physical environment and everyday experience in some of England's most deprived coastal communities.

English seaside resort towns were historically developed on the promise of health and vitality. The coast was considered a sanctuary for convalescence. Today, that geography is inverted.

Many English seaside towns and post-industrial coastal ports have become landscapes of social vulnerability.

This photographic sequence maps this vulnerability, from fading coastal leisure to the realities of ill health, disability, and homelessness.

The sequence starts with an image of Great Yarmouth pier (IMD 478), where a giant teddy bear stares, sentinel-like, over the roofline of the pier under a heavy, overcast sky.

Beneath the jovial veneer, a man walks in silhouette below the structure, a visual metaphor for the vulnerability and isolation that often haunt these towns out of season.

In the second image, below the signage for an amusement arcade in Margate (IMD 49) claiming ‘entertainment for all the family’, the only evidence of activity is an elderly man pushing a female companion in a wheelchair.

This panoply of holiday joy has become the backdrop for the quiet labour of physical care, a sign of the aged, often infirm, demographic of many seaside towns.

Moving away from the promenade and the sea, the landscape of the high street serves as a direct indicator of the characteristics of ‘left-behind’ seaside towns; an ageing population, social isolation, and an economy that has suffered from decades of decline and deprivation.

In the following image, captured in a Lowestoft side street, the frame is bisected by a street lamp.

Behind it stands a weathered street sign for ‘Beach Road’ and a banner offering ‘Companionship Services’ (IMD 180), as if to emphasise and echo the isolation evident in the opening image.

It highlights the forms of social isolation that can accompany an ageing population and the erosion of traditional support networks.

This depressed economic environment dictates not just how people live, but also what they eat.

The following image shows the shuttered storefront of ‘Grill & Grind’ in Great Yarmouth (IMD 406), advertising cheap, highly processed, nutritionally deficient food, including a quarter-pounder for £1 (with or without fried onions).

This is a visual signifier of coastal towns that have become a food wasteland, where economic deprivation has led to a reliance on diets that contribute to obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

The physical toll of this environment is punctuated by the following image of a shopfront, also on Great Yarmouth High Street (IMD 352), prominently advertising ‘LARGER SIZES AVAILABLE / 2XL–5XL’, a commercial signifier of localised health trends.

To cope with this reality of decline and deprivation, a pub signboard (IMD 56) advertises escapism in the form of double shots of spirits for £3.

Alcohol dependency and related health problems are a major issue in many seaside towns.

Blackpool has the highest alcohol-specific mortality rate for men in Britain and the second-highest for women.

The following image pivots away from shopfront evidence towards the psychological undercurrents of the community.

Spray painted across a construction hoarding in an empty urban space just behind Southend promenade (IMD 946), the words ‘CALL IN SICK’ serve as a cynical commentary on societal attitudes and well-being.

This outward frustration turns inward in the following image.

Scratched on the inside of a public toilet in Harwich (IMD 1493) are the words: ‘Raymonds daddy is dead... Raymonds daddy waz a crack head’, a testament to intergenerational trauma, substance dependency, and mental illness.

The following image pair demonstrates how disability and ageing have become the physical norm in many seaside towns.

In the first, a woman on a mobility scooter drives past a row of old telephone boxes outside the boarded-up windows of the Grade II-listed former GPO building in central Blackpool (IMD 2), demonstrating visually how physical disability coexists with civic and structural decay.

The scale of this demographic reality is laid bare in the following image, also in Blackpool, showing a tightly packed ‘fleet’ of mobility scooters, resembling an informal transport depot (IMD 2).

Mobility aids are no longer an occasional exception for the old and infirm; they have become part of the primary infrastructure of daily life in many seaside towns.

The sequence culminates in two images of homelessness in Grimsby.

In the first, physical disability and poverty converge outside a shopping centre in Grimsby town centre (IMD 365).

A rough sleeper lies wrapped in a red sleeping bag next to his wheelchair.

The image captures the porosity of the social safety net, illustrating the reality faced by people who are both mobility-impaired and homeless, literally outside in the cold.

The final image shifts the focus of this survival struggle to a damp pedestrian underpass in Grimsby (IMD 365).

Here, bedding is laid out against the wall alongside a peeling civic mural celebrating the heritage of ‘Great Grimsby’ and its 1201 charter.

This final juxtaposition lays bare a tragic irony: the painted memories of a prosperous past are flaking from the wall, while vulnerable individuals are forced to sleep below it on the concrete floor.

Once sought as a haven and a cure for illness, many coastal towns have become a site of chronic neglect.

At the height of its popularity as a tourist resort, Blackpool had an estimated 5,000 guest houses, boarding houses, and hotels. This number has since shrunk to fewer than 1,500. Many have closed and remain boarded up and shuttered, while others have been demolished or converted to alternative uses.

In the case of guest houses and smaller hotels, conversion into cheap accommodation in the form of Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) has intensified social problems within the town, contributing to the inward migration of vulnerable adults and children from other areas attracted by low-cost housing and adding to existing concentrations of vulnerability and deprivation.

This typology examines the surviving hotel stock as evidence of wider transformations in tourism, housing, and deprivation. Their premises function as a material archive of working-class leisure, shifts in post-war tourism patterns, and systemic economic decline.

Borrowing its title from Milton’s epic of a fall from grace, Paradise Lost tracks the literal and psychological descent of Blackpool from its consolidation-stage tourism peak in the early 1970s to its subsequent decline as holidaymakers and their spending power moved to foreign resorts.

The title functions as melancholic irony, contrasting the 'paradise' promised by seaside hotel branding with an infrastructure suffering from structural fatigue.

By examining ad-hoc architectural modifications, weathered masonry, commercial signage, and socio-economic markers, this typology uses the town’s hotel facades to map a broader narrative of urban coastal decline.

There are no people in these images. No tourists, no hoteliers; yet the images are invested with what French-Algerian philosopher Jacques Derrida termed the trace—the lingering presence of what is no longer there. The typology demonstrates that a space can be entirely empty of people yet saturated with humanity; the architecture itself becoming a living monument to the generations that holidayed there, and those that still do.

The sequence opens with Blackpool attempting to project an illusion of glamour, relying on the superficial trappings of luxury to mask structural ageing. The first frame shows a corner plot (IMD 12) where a traditional boarding house has been painted in a minimalist black-and-white scheme, its ground-floor windows flooded with a vibrant purple light. The name ‘Luxe Hotel’ and the catchphrase ‘Find Your Paradise’ establish the aspirational vocabulary of escapist seaside tourism.

The second image, The Mercury Hotel (IMD 12), demonstrates how some small hotel operators have focused on niche markets to survive. Here, the side of the building has been covered by a large mural of Freddie Mercury leaning enigmatically on a vacuum cleaner, surrounded by vinyl records.

This approach relies on performative pop nostalgia to transform a generic boarding house into a themed subcultural destination, positioned on an otherwise quiet, residential street corner.

When the perspective shifts from these corner views to a compressed, flat facade, any allusion to a coastal fantasy begins to unravel. The image of the Sapphire Hotel (IMD 12) on the promenade near Central Pier leverages familiar linguistic and visual motifs—a gold diamond emblem on a royal blue banner—to signal a premium experience.

But right beneath the signboard, the pretence slips. The paint is peeling, the facade is weathered, and dirty window frames enclose a faded 'Vacancies' sign. On the ground, a strip of red carpet meets a patch of artificial grass covered in debris. The perpetual toll of the salt air exposes the financial strain of ongoing building maintenance.

As the sequence moves on, the extended lounge of the Craig-Y-Don Hotel (IMD 12) highlights a ubiquitous seaside conversion: the flat-roofed ground-floor extension built outward over what was likely once a Victorian front garden. Large panoramic windows look out at the promenade. Here is another claim to a premium tourist experience—a vinyl banner promoting the venue as a home for ‘World Class Entertainers’.

The Dudley Hotel (IMD 4), positioned in a side street at a lower price point, makes more modest claims. It advertises a guest car park, but the true visual anchor is a large, stuffed figure of The Grinch in a Santa outfit sitting permanently on the flat-roof extension.

This display of bizarre humour tinged with kitsch is a definitive sign of the English seaside resort, an eccentric visual detail positioned under a flat, gloomy February sky.

The Strathdene Hotel (IMD 12) establishes its identity through a symbolic claim to British heritage and nationalism. Alongside the standard inventory of hotel amenities, including colour TVs and a licensed bar, the windows are lined with St. George’s Cross bunting.

On one level, this overt display of national identity serves as an emotional anchor designed to appeal to a traditional domestic working-class customer base. On another level, it alludes to the right-wing political views that have taken root in many struggling coastal towns.

At this point in the narrative, any illusions of luxury fall away, replaced by the fading, brutalist concrete facade of The New Promenade Hotel (IMD 12). The cosy domestic warmth of the original converted houses is gone, replaced by heavy, utilitarian structural features.

The building has a rusted iron balcony and a massive concrete walkway leading up to double doors and a 'Vacancies' sign. The concrete is stained by exposure to the sea air, revealing a design that prioritises durability over aesthetics while visually undercutting claims to hospitality.

Further south on the promenade, the Palm Beach Hotel (IMD 36) has the same elevated terrace structure, but the result is more tragic. The main entryway is dark, a faded 'No Vacancies' sign remains in an upper window pane, and the ground-floor void beneath the patio has been crudely boarded up with plywood. It stands as a pronounced trace of economic decline, reflecting the impact of reduced tourist numbers and spending.

The allusion to a paradise reappears and falters further in the following image showing a faded tropical mural on a hotel covered with scaffolding (IMD 982). Further north along the coast (IMD 982), bright blue paint has been daubed onto brickwork, accompanied by a sign offering unspecified entertainment alongside the availability of ‘low cost cocktails’.

This commercial focus points directly to the substance abuse problems and high alcohol-specific mortality rates that plague Blackpool and other deprived coastal towns—a reality explored further in the accompanying Health and Disability sequence on this site.

The outside space is choked with the detritus of hospitality management: stacked metal folding chairs, a lone table, discarded building materials, and black bin bags left on the tarmac.

The final images further peel back any remaining vestige of holiday fantasy, settling into the reality of buildings bearing the scars of failing infrastructure and structural decay. The Sea Princess Hotel and Restaurant (IMD 4) attempts to mimic more recent commercial design with a dark grey, aluminium-framed glass frontage, but the space looks clinical and dead.

The concrete forecourt is strewn with litter and features a picnic bench, overturned table, and a large green plastic storage bin. The setting lacks any sign of human warmth, capturing the desolation of a resort town struggling to find its purpose when the ‘bucket and spade’ tourists have gone.

At the Belmont Hotel (IMD 4), a weathered metal sign fixed to a crumbling exterior wall lists the throwback availability of ‘Smoking & Non Smoking Rooms’ and ‘Christmas & New Year Packages’. The white painted brickwork and masonry are heavily stained by mould, algae, and peeling stucco, with discarded Coke cans at the base.

The building is slowly consuming itself, illustrating how neglect and a lack of investment result in physical decay.

The typology concludes by completely stripping away the facade of hospitality (IMD 4). The final image centres on a brick wall behind a seafront hotel bearing a fractured, red-and-white ‘Lyndene/Licensed’ sign, cut off from any entrance, window, or sign of life. The frame is dominated by grey industrial ventilation tubes, exposed utility wires, and a bright yellow gas pipe tracking across the brickwork above a blue boundary wall.

The holiday 'paradise' is laid bare as a network of exposed services and ageing infrastructure, offering a sobering visual comment on the structural and socio-economic decline of the traditional English seaside resort as exemplified by Blackpool.

The image sequence begins with a colourful advert for ‘86 luxury apartments by the sea’ set back from the promenade in Margate (IMD 426), displayed against a cracked concrete wall covered with graffiti.

This juxtaposition sets the tone by promising regeneration in the form of a seaside idyll, which is being promoted as a new reality for a coastal location that has suffered from decline and deprivation.

The next image follows this promise with the reality; black iron security gates enclosing a neat, manicured courtyard (IMF 426).

It suggests that the ‘luxury’ promoted on the sign in the first image takes the form of an exclusive, gated enclave separated from the wider community.

Moving directly to the coast, in this case, Ramsgate, the sequence shows the scale of the architectural and cultural shift taking place.

The curvilinear blocks looming over the beachfront illustrate how, in this location, new luxury architecture is increasingly dominating traditional seaside elements, such as a blue-and-white painted beach storage container (IMD 48).

Away from the seafront, evidence of gentrification begins to appear on high streets and in town centres.

The introduction to this phase shows the jarring friction of early-stage gentrification: the minimalist, pastel shades of ‘Dept of Joy’ rubbing shoulders with the bright orange frontage of a takeaway kebab shop in St Leonards, Hastings (IMD 2578).

Illustrating how historical community infrastructure is repurposed as gentrification proceeds, the fifth image in the sequence features The Old Kent Market in Margate (IMD 897).

With a chequered history as a bingo club and snooker hall, it has been transformed into an artisanal space across from the Turner Contemporary, aimed at gallery visitors and affluent newcomers.

The next three images provide focus on Margate’s culture-led regeneration.

The green-fronted Georgian building, which was formerly an agency for a dye works, has morphed into Breuer & Dawson, a vintage clothing boutique (IMD 897).

Next door is Olby's (IMD 897), a restaurant and bar promoting itself as offering ‘soul food’ and ‘soul music’.

Together, they represent a wave of retail gentrification where curated subcultures and a chic evening economy take over historic buildings.

The following image of the pastel green Pickled Fox restaurant (IMD 897) provides another example of gentrification in the vicintiy of the Turner Contemporary aimed at an aspiring clientele.

Arguably, the Liminal Gallery (IMG 897) and Number Two Duke Street (IMF 897) represent the final, fully polished stage of commercial gentrification of this location, where independent galleries and high-end boutique retail redefine the local socioeconomic identity.

The final section of the sequence switches focus to the communities affected by these changes.

Proclaiming that ‘total wellbeing has arrived’, a sign for Your Spa (IMD 2862) in a deprived area of Ramsgate has been damaged and defaced with graffiti, suggesting resistance, or at least resentment, towards creeping gentrification.

The sequence ends by returning to the seafront, this time in Hastings.

After seeing the luxury flats, the boutique high street outlets, and the pushback graffiti, the melancholic cat mural on Hastings seafront proclaiming that ‘everything I have I’ve been given’ acts as a quiet closure (IMD 1957).

Not with the glossy luxury promised by developer led regeneration, but with the resignation of a community that feels disempowered by the process.

Culture-led regeneration in coastal towns is often associated with major institutions such as the Turner Contemporary in Margate and Tate St Ives.

These galleries represent substantial investment in cultural provision, attracting visitors and contributing to the identity and regeneration of coastal economies.

Their scale and visibility can make culture an explicit part of regeneration strategy, whereas smaller interventions operate more informally within the existing fabric of a town.

This difference in scale provides a useful context for considering what art can achieve when it is embedded within ordinary streets rather than major cultural institutions.

The photographs in this sequence explore artistic intervention on a smaller, more personal scale.

Murals, painted shutters, and images in vacant shopfronts bring colour and artistic flair to everyday streets often affected by economic decline and deprivation.

Many occupy surfaces created by decline itself: boarded windows, closed shops, deteriorating walls and redundant commercial buildings.

The condition of the surface therefore becomes part of the work and of its subsequent photographic representation.

Their impact may be confined to a wall, a building, or a passing encounter, but even modest artworks can alter how neglected spaces are perceived and experienced.

The temporary nature of some of these interventions is also significant.

Paint fades, buildings are redeveloped and boarded surfaces may eventually disappear, making the photograph a record not only of the artwork but of a particular moment in the changing life of the street.

Photography consequently preserves an intervention that is likely to be less permanent than the building or location on which it appears.

At the same time, such cultural projects may intersect with wider processes of gentrification, raising questions about who benefits from visual renewal.

A distinction emerges between elaborate images that invite public attention and forms of graffiti, including ‘tagging’, that can compound the deterioration of the built environment.

Yet artistic merit and permission are separate questions.

An unauthorised intervention may become a valued local landmark, while a commissioned artwork may prove controversial.

These forms of expression coexist, sometimes uneasily, on the same streets and surfaces.

The photographs deliberately retain this wider context rather than isolating the artworks.

Walls, pavements, bins, fencing, boarded windows and adjoining buildings remain within the frame, allowing the intervention to be considered as part of the physical condition of the location rather than simply as an artwork in its own right.

The sequence opens in Grimsby, where a painted, tattooed woman dominates the shutter of a vintage shop (IMD 4635).

The turquoise frontage and nostalgic imagery project a distinctive identity even while the premises are closed.

Here, the artwork functions simultaneously as decoration and advertisement, using the closed shutter as a surface through which the business continues to project its character when it is not trading.

On Margate seafront, a bearded portrait looks out from the entrance to what was once Cliftonville lido close to the Turner Contemporary but one of Margate’s most deprived areas (IMD 87).

Its direct gaze commands attention, but the surrounding graffiti, boarded openings, and damaged façade remain prominent.

The art work gives the building a compelling presence while drawing attention to its poor physical condition.

Rather than concealing deterioration, the mural becomes part of a layered surface in which artistic intervention, graffiti and physical decay remain visible together.

In Harwich, a glamorous female portrait covers rough boarding that seals off a derelict building (IMD 2966).

Text panels recount local memories of the cinema and seafront, connecting the imagery to intimate experiences of place.

Here the intervention does more than decorate an otherwise unattractive surface.

By incorporating memories associated with the site, it connects the present condition of the building with local social history, introducing personal recollection into a space marked by physical decay.

In Fleetwood (IMD 35), an enormous, inverted portrait references the town’s former fishing industry.

Windows puncture the mural, while rusting fencing hints at the consequences of the disappearance of what was once the dominant local industry.

Its scale transforms the wall of a building into a prominent landmark, yet the mural cannot be separated visually from the industrial fabric and deteriorating structures around it.

Returning to Harwich, another female portrait brings vivid colour to a boarded frontage next to a permanently closed shop in the Old Town (IMD 2966).

The sequence then returns to Margate (IMD 897), where a mural on the side of a building in a gentrified area opposite the Turner Contemporary is aesthetically in keeping with the small galleries, boutiques and restaurants now established there.

By contrast, at the other, ungentrified end of town, a colourful mural references small-boat crossings.

In the background stands the run-down Nayland Rock Hotel, once patronised by Mick Jagger and, more recently, used to house asylum seekers and migrants.

In a further Harwich scene (IMD 88), a psychedelic woman’s face appears on the boarded-up shopfront of a former Chinese takeaway, another vacant decaying commercial property in Harwich Old Town.

The contrast reveals the limits of visual improvement: the frontage has a new, vibrant focal point, but the fabric of the building still bears the marks of decay and neglect.

The Hastings work entitled “She Saw an Eyesore by the Seashore” makes the dilapidated surroundings themselves the subject of the intervention (IMD 3306).

It is a satirical nod to the local controversy surrounding the seafront building.

In Blackpool, two painted figures occupy a car park, and a painted ‘Bad Santa’ competes with tagging in a service alley (IMD 2).

Both works are encountered away from Blackpool’s principal tourist spaces.

Their settings, a car park and a service alley, place artistic intervention amongst the more functional and neglected surfaces of the town.

In the alley particularly, the distinction between deliberate, artistic image making and subsequent tagging becomes visually blurred.

The accumulation of different traces and marks also suggests that these surfaces remain contested and continually changing.

The sequence concludes in Harwich (IMD 759), where brightly painted birds animate the sterling-boarded frontage of a former bookshop, a common sight in coastal towns.

Across these images, creativity and continuing neglect occupy the same physical spaces, presenting renewal as partial and uneven.

The interventions may change the appearance and experience of individual sites, but the photographs collectively show that the underlying evidence of vacancy, deterioration and economic change remains.

Collectively, the photographs invite comparison with ‘artwashing’, a term used by activists in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, to describe how cultural interventions can make an economically disadvantaged area more attractive to property investors while contributing to pressures that displace existing residents.

While the photographs in this sequence do not establish that these coastal artworks form part of the same process.

They nevertheless raise questions relevant to both major cultural developments and smaller-scale works: who benefits, and what changes beyond appearance?

This spatialisation image sequence explores the contrasting development of neighbouring seaside towns. Just a few miles of coastline can separate very different economic ecosystems.

This divergence often arises because geographical proximity does not mean that towns inherited the same economic characteristics.

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, seaside resorts deliberately targeted different markets.

Consequently, the decline in domestic tourism numbers and revenue from the 1970s onwards produced uneven social and economic outcomes.

The growth of inexpensive foreign holidays and changing travel habits particularly harmed towns with large concentrations of seasonal hotels and mass leisure and entertainment infrastructure, contributing to persistent social and economic problems.

As visitor numbers declined, redundant hotels and guest houses were often converted into low cost accommodation.

Combined with seasonal employment, weak investment and falling property values, this contributed to persistent socio-economic problems.

Neighbouring resorts with more affluent residential populations and less dependence on mass tourism were generally better placed to adapt.

Blackpool and Lytham St Annes provide a good example. Blackpool developed a large leisure-based economy serving the industrial towns of Lancashire, with boarding houses, theatres and amusement attractions.

By contrast, Lytham and St Annes developed as quieter, carefully planned destinations for wealthier visitors and residents.

Similar contrasts can be seen between Margate and Broadstairs, Ramsgate and Broadstairs, and Lowestoft and its more prosperous Suffolk neighbours, Aldeburgh and Southwold.

The image sequence connects three related conditions: how resorts were developed, the present condition of their built environments, and their socio-economic circumstances.

In each of seven pairings, the first photograph represents the relatively more deprived town and the second its more prosperous neighbour.

Together, the images use physical condition, vacancy and the condition of public spaces to visualise different economic histories and current socio-economic circumstances.

The first pair contrasts Blackpool with Lytham St Annes. Blackpool is represented by a brightly painted amusement building advertising slot machines and a £1 burger (IMD 3).

Its crowded lettering and slogan painted across a shutter evoke inexpensive entertainment and the struggle to attract passing trade.

In Lytham St Annes, an ornamental fountain occupies a planted public space (IMD 10726). Its condition, open setting and civic function suggest continuity and active maintenance rather than the pressure to generate spending.

The second pair moves from Lowestoft Old Town to Aldeburgh. Lowestoft’s Crown Hotel (IMD 219) retains the scale and ornamentation of a substantial historic building yet has long been closed and boarded up.

In Aldeburgh, a commercial art gallery (IMD 17351) presents a clean facade and carefully arranged window display.

Its traditional frontage and curated display convert historic character into an upmarket retail attraction.

The contrast is between heritage as a costly liability and heritage successfully marketed as a retail asset.

Ramsgate Old Town and Broadstairs form the third pairing. The Ramsgate building (IMD 2862), a fomer public house, has elegant proportions and surviving columns, but boarded openings, graffiti and weathered surfaces suggest prolonged vacancy.

In neighbouring Broadstairs (IMD 9637), the Tartar Frigate’s flint facade, sash windows and traditional signage are actively maintained. Its maritime identity is packaged as a gastro pub experience.

Both photographs show historic fabric; one records permanent closure while the other shows heritage supporting an operating business. 

The fourth pair returns to Lowestoft and Southwold. Lowestoft’s ‘The Welcome’ pub (IMD 219) has handwritten notices advertising cheap alcohol, while faded signage likely suggest a business competing primarily through price.

The cloting shop in Southwold (IMD 22420) has a restored, symmetrical frontage and restrained display.

The pairing contrasts economic pressure with seemingly  confident specialist retail, and a low margin offer with consumption based on quality and discretionary income.

Margate and Broadstairs provide the fifth pair. Margate’s former Cliftonville Lido (IMD 87) is a graffiti covered, stained concrete structure.

A surviving tower signals its former purpose, but the swimming pool closed in the late 1970s and the site has fallen into disrepair.

Neighbouring Broadstairs is represented by a cliff top shelter (IMD 7971) whose green painted seating, decorative brackets and painted surfaces are well mainteined and intact. It is a small public amenity that remains part of everyday life.

The sixth pair revisits Blackpool and Lytham St Annes. A person sleeps rough outside the shuttered premises beneath a pink fascia on Blackpool’s promenade (IMD 12).

The image juxtaposes acute social need with a landscape designed for pleasure and leisure consumption.

The photograph cannot represent Blackpool as a whole, but the sight of someone sleeping rough beside shuttered leisure premises is difficult to ignore.  

Lytham St Annes instead shows a well maintained bandstand (IMD 10726) and paddling pool with a child crossing the foreground.

Public space appears usable and supported by continuing municipal maintenance.

The final pairing returns to Margate and Broadstairs.

Margate’s seafront Nayland Rock Hotel (IMD 4006) retains an imposing terrace and monumental entrance, but rusted columns, missing decorative finishes and warning signs epitomise its deterioration.

Its size conveys the maintenance burden left by mass tourism in the wake of the decline in tourist numbers and income which began in the 1970s.

Broadstairs concludes with a more intimate beach scene: a blue and white structure, beach huts and a wooden path across the beach (IMD 9637).

The buildings are well kept, and their smaller scale remains compatible with current leisure and residential use.

Taken together, the pairs show that physical condition is both an outcome and a mechanism of inequality.

Occupied shops, well maintained public spaces and functioning amenities encourage confidence and reinforce a genteel identity.

Vacancy and inadequate maintenance reveal weak demand and can act to further deter investment.

The sequence does not suggest that prosperous towns are free from deprivation or that deprived towns lack culture and community.

It shows how contrasting development histories become visible.

One resort sustains its inheritance as desirable heritage, while another struggles with buildings and infrastructure whose original economic purpose is compromised or has or disappeared.

This image sequence looks beyond decline and deprivation in English coastal towns to consider how regeneration becomes visible within the built environment.

It is often presented through funding announcements, development plans and projected economic outcomes.

On the streets of coastal towns, however, it is encountered less coherently: as a cleared site, a new building, construction hoarding or an architectural image of a promised future.

Critically, these material signs of change do not, by themselves, establish that wider economic and social renewal is taking place.

The sequence begins in Jaywick with two images of the newly built Sunspot market and event space (IMD 1).

Its new, functional architecture contrasts with the town’s longstanding association with deprivation and low quality housing.

The building provides evidence of investment and an attempt to create space for enterprise and community activity, but its longer-term value will depend on how it is used, who participates and whether the benefits become embedded within the local economy.

Although encouraging, this represents an initial step in Jaywick’s regeneration rather than its completion.

The following four images move to Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft, where large-scale infrastructure provides an assertive visual sign of renewal.

Great Yarmouth’s Herring Bridge (IMD 250) and Lowestoft’s Gull Wing Bridge (IMD 333) are intended to improve connectivity and stimulate economic activity.

Their scale and clean surfaces embody the confidence often associated with public investment.

In the first Great Yarmouth image, the bridge exists as a computer-generated visualisation behind security fencing. It is followed by an image of the raised structure, photographed before the bridge became formally operational.

At Lowestoft, the clean white lines of the bridge dominate the frame and the surrounding landscape.

Improved connectivity matters because geographic isolation, often characterised as the coastal town’s ‘180 degree hinterland’, can restrict investment and access to employment.

Improved infrastructure can help to reduce these constraints, but bridges and new roads only facilitate movement; they do not determine where investment will occur or who will obtain the employment it generates.

Successful redeployment of labour and capital also requires relevant skills and businesses capable of converting improved access into sustainable economic activity.

These images therefore record the creation of economic potential, rather than a final economic outcome.

Returning to Great Yarmouth, the sequence shifts from infrastructure to the uncertain spaces of construction and heritage restoration.

Temporary metal fencing runs along the seafront, separating the public realm from work taking place behind it (IMD 478).

In the next image, the iconic Winter Gardens in the same location can be seen above a line of hoarding.

Its weathered glass and iron structure remains visible, while the computer-generated visualisation below presents the restored building as an active public space.

Past, present and the anticipated future occupy the same frame. The building is both a remnant of the earlier tourism economy and a potential resource for renewal.

This relationship between trace and projection recurs in Blackpool.

A window graphic (IMD 38) promises to make the town better through a new development; elsewhere, a cleared site leaves bricks and foundations beside occupied terraced housing (IMD 12).

A further image shows a seafront building during refurbishment, its damaged structure visible above images of the intended result (IMD 4).

These are transitional landscapes. Demolition may release land and capital for more productive uses, as envisaged in Schumpeter’s theory of Creative Destruction, but it also produces loss and generates uncertainty.

The idealised architectural visualisation can obscure the uneven process of physical change taking place within the town.

The Blackpool images are instructive because visible investment can coexist with severe and persistent deprivation.

Regeneration should not be assessed only through the architectural quality of a completed scheme or the expenditure attached to it.

The relevant questions concern employment, housing, community services and the distribution of benefits. Physical investment can alter a town’s appearance while leaving underlying inequalities substantially unchanged.

Conversely, a cleared site or unfinished building may represent an early stage of regeneration that is not yet reflected in official statistics.

Photographic images cannot resolve this ambiguity, but they can make it visible and open to further examination.

In Morecambe, the proposed Eden of the North project appears as imagery applied to the windows of a decaying discount store (IMD 155).

The deteriorating commercial frontage remains visible around an idealised representation of future renewal.

The juxtaposition connects an ambitious environmental project with the town’s existing economic fabric. It raises the question of how investment intended to attract visitors relates to established businesses and residents.

The image does not question the potential value of the proposal; rather, it situates the promise of regeneration within the existing social and economic conditions it is intended to improve.

The sequence concludes at Dreamland in Margate (IMD 49), where the restored timber roller-coaster and colourful visitor signage record the renewal of an existing tourism asset.

The ageing brutalist residential block behind it locates this investment within the town’s wider social and economic conditions.

The image therefore brings together two dimensions of regeneration: the capacity for investment to renew seaside heritage and the uneven consequences of arts- and culture-led change.

Although this process has altered Margate’s economy and representation, it has also contributed to gentrification, higher housing costs and the potential displacement of existing residents in the Old Town.

The photograph consequently resists a simplified narrative of recovery.

Taken together, these photographs present regeneration as spatially uneven and incomplete.

Infrastructure, community facilities, heritage restoration and cultural reuse may contribute to economic renewal, but none is sufficient in isolation.

The sequence moves between what has been lost, what is under construction and what is promised. It records coastal towns as places in flux, where decline, resilience and renewal coexist.

Photography cannot demonstrate the eventual success of these projects, but it can preserve evidence of their emergence and establish a record against which subsequent change may be assessed.