Dreamland-by-the-Sea

"These Ballardian landscapes are captured in all their beauty in Dreamland-by-the-Sea"
Nick Berkeley, Photographer & Film Maker

Reclaiming memories of Britain's love affair with the seaside, from piers to lidos, pavilions to promenades, beach games to arcade games Dreamland-by-the-Sea is the story of these Dystopian oases that are also fond wells of national identity and nostalgia.

Decades of indifference and downright neglect have delivered these once grand icons to our own age with a slightly dark, edgy and decaying beauty. From as young as I could remember I seem to have had sand stuck between my toes, a horde of salty-smelling cowrie shells on my lap and an unresolved daydream about who was staying at a strange looking resort hotel and who could afford to go on all the rides.

Yet more than this as part of a generation brought up on budget foreign travel, my photographs offer a door into our collective memory: our grandfathers as boys swimming in then state-of-the-art lidos; a passionate liaison; a lost moment; a defining memory of youth. More than ever the magical pull of the seaside is attracting Britons as the reassuring comfort and escape from the real world designed for another age is sought once again.