Max Miechowski’s shot of a closed-up ice‑cream parlour alludes to the precarity of seaside towns
Last summer, the photographer Max Miechowski set out to travel the east coast of England, starting in Felixstowe and heading up toward Hartlepool and beyond. Miechowski, 30, grew up a few miles outside Lincoln, and day trips and holidays were mainly to the seaside towns of Yorkshire or Norfolk, so he knew some of the places already. This picture was taken in Skegness, in the early evening, just after the ice-cream parlour had shut up for the day. It has, he suggests, taken on an added poignancy with the events of the past months – the uncertainty of closure set against the hope for brighter months ahead.
Many of Miechowski’s pictures – of fishermen on beaches set against the silhouette of steel works, or sunbathers near the Sizewell nuclear plant – carry a similar kind of ambiguous romance. He was drawn to the contrasts of the coastline, from the gentrified sea-fronts of Suffolk, to the harder edges of struggling resorts and fishing towns further north; erosion has become a theme, with some communities under threat physically, others economically.
