Greetings from Eastbourne (continued)

Sometimes there’s no such thing as the right decision. Sometimes making a decision, any decision, is all you need. Today I went to Eastbourne to start working on my main photographic project for this term. Better late than never. Circumstances and the nature of my day job meant that Eastbourne was going to be the subject. A bit of thinking (see the earlier Eastbourne post) and I decided that the seafront at Eastbourne was an even better subject. Today, after looking at the seafront and thinking even further, it was obvious that Eastbourne Pier, the extraordinary, 1,000ft (305m) structure built to a radical design on little cups on the seabed in 1866 to a design by the English naval architect Eugenius Birch (1818-1884), who, coincidentally, also built Brighton’s West Pier, the subject of my first serious documentary film in the late 1980s, was absolutely perfect. Today, armed only with my Nokia E61i on a pleasantly bright a breezy afternoon, I took a stroll around the pier to take a few visual notes to help me plan the project in more detail. Eastbourne Pier is a microcosm of shapes, colours, shadows, people, ideas, eccentricity, culture, recreation, sport, food, drink, seagulls, vapour trails and a lot of fabulous-looking people. The English seaside may well have been done to death by photographers in the past, but that’s no reason why it can’t be done again. It certainly hasn’t been done on a mobile phone. Using a combination of techniques from blind, furtive photography through to conversations with people on the pier, I’m now set to visit the pier, rain or shine, to photograph it, and to simultaneously learn more about the pier’s history and combine the two into a photographic essay. All of it presented using my earlier postcard idea, ie. with accompanying text on the back of each photograph. Click on the picture here for a look at the first edited 16 photographs. All comments and suggestions welcome. One of the main reasons I wanted to do Eastbourne Pier, the 1901 camera obscura, was closed today. Watch this space!