Benidorm – Age 7 – 2017
The sun, the sea, the sand and the ultimate resort of time past. Benidorm. Here you can go abroad as an Englishman and be greeted with a pint of beer and absolutely nothing foreign, except for the warm glow of sunshine.
At seven years old, it was the first holiday I ever went on. Surrounded by inflatables, hit playlists, and hoards of families just like my own scheduling the day’s fun activities
I immediately felt sick. It’s true that the colorama of stolen ice lollies swirling inside me had not created a good feeling. But the artificial colours weren’t just inside, they were everywhere. It was the kind of indulgence that should have made anybody feel ill and even as a child, I hated it.
But there must be something more to the place with an Elvis every night of the week. Maybe, I had got Benidorm all wrong. So I decided to embark on a photography project to transform a memory.
Visiting off-season I would get to encounter the sun-worshippers that had turned the holiday of a lifetime into just that, settling into deckchairs forever. In Benidorm all you had to do was burn your skin to a tangerine crisp and, like wearing a football shirt, you could say I belong here, I am on holiday. Maybe that could be me too. So I loaded my Olympus LT point and shoot with Kodak Gold 200, the holiday film of my childhood, and I went back.
52 page, Street Photography magazine.
