American Beaches Andy Hughes

Virginia Beach, USA, 2011

Virginia Beach is a resort city with miles of beaches and hundreds of hotels, motels, and restaurants along its oceanfront. The East Coast Surfing Championships (ECSC) hold an annual surfing contests and is one of the United States Surfing Federation’s major amateur events.

'In my flurry of nostalgic spite, I have done the Monterey Peninsula a disservice. It is a beautiful place, clean, well run, and progressive. The beaches are clean where once they festered with fish guts and flies. The canneries which once put up a sickening stench are gone, their places filled with restaurants, antique shops, and the like'.

Travels with Charley: In search of America by John Steinbeck, 1962

These photographs were made between 2007 - 2012 while Hughes was traveling and exhibiting work in the USA. Hughes read Steinbeck's Travels With Charlie as he explored the coastlines of Virginia and Florida. The resulting pictures concentrate on the mundane nature of the beach and intimate knowledge of how the waters edge might be experienced beyond that of a surfer or beach affecianado. Hughes' enduring interest in the interaction between place, objects and the seascape is also evident. His approach to the coast echoes his photographic approach to waste and plastic pollution.

American Beaches Andy Hughes

Virginia Beach, USA, 2011

Hughes met this man at Virgina beach, they both chatted about why they were there. It was a late October day and both were surprised how few visitors were in the city. He had travelled many hundreds of miles to see the sea, it was the first time he had ever seen the ocean.In 1839, Charlotte Bronte saw the sea for the first time at Bridlington, Yorkshire, before she arrived she wrote, ‘the idea of seeing the sea-of been near it-watching its changes by sunrise, sunset, moonlight, and noon day, in calm-perhaps in storm, fills and satisfies my mind’.

The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell, published 1857

American Beaches Andy Hughes

Virginia Beach, USA, 2011

American Beaches Andy Hughes

Atlantic Ocean, Virginia Beach, USA, 2011

American Beaches Andy Hughes

Fun Park, Virginia Beach, USA, 2011

American Beaches Andy Hughes

Fun Park, Virginia Beach, USA, 2011

American Beaches Andy Hughes

Fun Park, Virginia Beach, USA, 2011

American Beaches Andy Hughes

Pacific Avenue Parking Lot, Virginia Beach, USA, 2011

American Beaches Andy Hughes

Fun Park, Virginia Beach, USA, 2011

American Beaches Andy Hughes

Motel, Atlantic Avenue, Virginia Beach, USA, 2011

American Beaches Andy Hughes

Ocean Eddies Diner, Virginia Beach, USA, 2011

American Beaches Andy Hughes

Atlantic Avenue,Virginia Beach, USA, 2011

American Beaches Andy Hughes

Sunsations, Atlantic Avenue on the corner of 5th Avenue, Virginia Beach, USA, 2011

American Beaches Andy Hughes

Dairy Queen, Virginia Beach, USA, 2011

American Beaches Andy Hughes

Virginia Beach, USA, 2011

Virginia Beach, a coastal city in southeastern Virginia, lies where the Chesapeake Bay meets the Atlantic Ocean. A 3-mile boardwalk stretches along its beach-lined oceanfront. The bayside First Landing State Park marks the 1607 arrival of the Jamestown colonists from England.

American Beaches Andy Hughes

Virginia Beach, USA, 2011

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