序言 | Foreword

在英国，一个人离海岸的距离永远不会超过75英里。有了这么多海岸线，英国人在海边摄影的传统就不足为奇了。美国摄影师可能催生了街头摄影；但在英国，我们有海滩。也许自然而然就产生了海滩摄影。在这里，人们可以放松，做自己，展示英国人温和古怪行为的所有痕迹。

几十年来，我一直在为海滩拍照，记录这一传统的方方面面，包括日光浴者的特写镜头、在水中嬉戏的漫不经心的游泳者，以及正在进行的永恒的沙滩野餐。我在20世纪70年代开始拍摄这一主题，并于1986年出版了《最后的度假村》，这本书描绘了利物浦附近的海滨度假胜地新布莱顿。这让我拍摄了世界各地的海滩，包括阿根廷、巴西、中国、西班牙、意大利、拉脱维亚、日本、美国、墨西哥、泰国，当然还有英国。

一个统一的活动是商品销售，因为海滩是销售几乎任何东西的最佳场所——从布莱顿的冰淇淋到印度果阿的洗耳服务，到智利的烤鱼，再到中国的面条。通过看一个国家的海滩，你可以了解到很多关于这个国家的信息：在不同的文化背景下，海滩是一个罕见的公共空间，在这里可以发现所有荒谬和古怪的民族行为。

In the United Kingdom, one is never more than seventy-five miles away from the coast. With this much shoreline, it's not surprising that there is a strong British tradition of photography by the seaside. American photographers may have given birth to Street photography; but in the UK, we have the beach. Perhaps the natural outcome is Beach photography. Here people can relax, be themselves, and show off all those traces of mildly eccentric British behavior.

I've photographed the beach over many decades, documenting all aspects of this tradition, including close-ups of sunbathers, rambunctious swimmers caught midplunge, and the eternal sandy picnic underway. I started photographing this subject in the 1970s and initially published The Last Resort, a book depicting the seaside resort of New Brighton, near Liverpool, in 1986. This led me to photograph beaches across the world, including those of Argentina, Brazil, China, Spain, Italy, Latvia, Japan, the United States, Mexico, Thailand, and of course, the UK.

One unifying activity is the selling of goods, for the beach is a prime place to sell pretty much anything- from ice cream in Brighton, to the services of an ear cleaner in Goa, India, to barbequed fish in Chile, to noodles in China. You can read a lot about a country by looking at its beaches: across cultures, the beach is that rare public space in which all absurdities and quirky national behaviors can be found.

- Martin Parr