IS THIS THE PLACE WE USED TO KNOW
“Is This the Place We Used to Know” is a project informed by growing up in the northwest of England during the 1980s in a working-class family, where annual British seaside holidays formed a significant part of family life.
These journeys often meant long drives to coastal towns, staying in static caravans, and spending days between the beach and the sea, leisure pools, arcades, and funfairs. Evenings were shaped by the communal rhythm of caravan clubhouses or local pubs, shared with parents and other holidaymakers.
This work emerges from a sense of nostalgia and reflection on those places as they are remembered and as they exist now. It revisits selected seaside towns through individually framed and composed images—forming a small, subjective collection of observations that consider social change, quiet decline, and the ordinary, often overlooked details of the built coastal environment.
Together, these images explore how familiar leisure spaces are transformed over time, asking whether what remains still holds traces of the places we remember.
