For years, award-winning photojournalist Peter Dench avoided photographing his hometown of Weymouth — until now. In the exhibition Six Go Down to the Seaside, he joins Martin Parr, Iain McKell, Paul Russell, Finnbarr Webster and Si Jubb to explore how one small coastal town can reveal the soul of England.
Until recently, I avoided photographing my hometown – Weymouth, a colour saturated resort on England’s south coast. Too close, too familiar, too… me. I believed the old adage: never photograph on your own doorstep. For over 25 years, I obeyed it. Instead I roamed the globe, photographing in around 65 countries, from India’s chaos to Norway’s tranquility. The salty air of home may have ebbed from my nostrils but I knew it had never actually left. The coast had seeped into me, influencing not only the way I see, but the individual I am.
Weekend away
For the exhibition Six Go Down to the Seaside at Saint Nic’s Gallery in Weymouth, I‘ve finally brought it all back home. Curated by Si Jubb, the show gathers six photographers — Martin Parr, Iain McKell, Paul Russell, Finnbarr Webster, Jubb himself, and me — all of whom have pointed our cameras at Weymouth and Portland in one way or another. Some of us grew up here. Some were day-trippers. All were attracted, willing or not, by that strange gravitational force which the English seaside exerts upon the creative.
Slapstick behaviour
Weymouth is a sitcom of English behaviour. All the cocktails taste of bubblegum and holidaymakers wear T-Shirts announcing: Sex, Drugs & Sausage Rolls. I grew up as a carefree lad among the pantomimes, Pavilion discos, Grockles and hormonal sailors on shore leave from Portland Naval Base. There were more pubs than you could shake a stick of rock at. The population tripled in the summer. My teens were scraped knees and scrapping to the sound of seagulls and slot machines. I Loved it. It was little England, beautiful and belligerent, mostly baffling.
That’s what makes the English seaside so photographically seductive, it’s a setting in which England plays itself. Innocence of bucket-and-spade is set alongside pint-and-fist anarchy. Midlanders on vacation during factory shutdown mix with a sea of blue rinse, pensioners coached in for a breath of fresh air. The weather is unpredictable and the humour as cheeky as the racks of seaside postcards that used to line the esplanade.
Sea views
What’s fascinating about this collective performance is the manner in which six photographers see the same blot of coastline so variously.
Martin Parr, of course, a long time ago turned Britain’s beaches into holiday labs. His Weymouth images are full of Parr-parts, hyperreal, surreal and satirical. They pin down the English at Englishness, sandals, socks and bowling ball.
Local lad Iain McKell, looks at his subject matter with a more romanticised gaze. Experienced at documenting British subcultures, he finds drama in the ordinary: Kiss Me Quick couples, Bingo callers and people paddling alone in the sea.
Paul Russell, a local street photographer, pinpoints the rhythm of daily seaside daftness with dry-eyed precision. His Weymouth is a roll-call of idiosyncrasies and mishaps, a dog digging in the sand, a balloon obscuring the face, thongs stretched across moon-white buttocks.
Finnbarr Webster, the master news photographer, records the town in labour and leisure, from awkward political photo-calls to high-jinks in the shallows. His pictures give the show its heartbeat, the everyday heroism of a seaside community.
Si Jubb, curator of the show, mixes documentary rigour with poetic timing, discovering laughter where others discover drudgery.
And then there’s me, the wayward photographer, back after years of avoiding my own image. I finally returned to document Queen Elizabeth II’s 2022 Platinum Jubilee celebrations. Weymouth & Portlanders love a royal knees-up.
Not on your own doorstep
In the 1980s I was a desperate young photographer, eager to escape. Weymouth was too small for my ambition. If I hadn’t left I’d probably have ended up a petty criminal or Estate Agent. I’m not sure which is worse. The more I look back, it’s clear Weymouth shaped my eyes deeply. Those childhood colours burned onto my retina – the Red Arrows, pink Candy Floss, striped deckchairs – are the same colours that define my photographs of England today. My blazingly vivid, slightly absurd approach to photography and slightly defensive gaze, feels unmistakably Weymouth-born.
Returning home with a camera, I see the ‘Muff (as it’s affectionately known by locals) in a different way. What appeared parochial now appears treasured. Not in a candy-coated fashion, but as a lens through which the wider national story curves. If you want to understand England, you might do worse than start at the coast. It’s where the country loosens up. Where the English smile, flirt, overeat, overheat and bicker. It’s real.
Homecoming
Home was where the work wasn’t for years. Now I know it’s where the work begins. Weymouth is where I learned to pay attention, to see the narrative in the slapstick and observe poetry in the lipstick on the pint glass. Photographing it now isn’t nostalgia, it’s a photographic Knickerbocker Glory – adding a cherry to the fruity layers that built me.
Six Go Down to the Seaside isn’t a cliched documentation of a town on its deathbed. It’s more a celebration of its contradictions: beauty and boredom, pride and parody. The series relates, in six sets of eyes, a tale about Weymouth & Portland but also asks questions about the English state of affairs: our sense of humour, eccentricity, and unwillingness to be serious, even when we should be.
Tide and time
The exhibition is part of the Portland & Weymouth Towns of Culture 2025 programme, funded by Arts Council England. It’s an endorsement that the seaside still matters, culturally and emotionally. You can grab yourself a seaside souvenir at an auction of selected works to fund a local photography prize.
Viewing the 38 images on display, the same seagulls scream above and the same sand irritates between the toes. Something has shifted — not the lens on the camera, but the one in my head. When is it time to go home? Maybe when you finally accept you never really left.
Fun beside the seaside
Opening Night: Friday 7 November 2025, 7:30 PM — Bar and music included, maybe even a live donkey.
Gallery Opening Times: 10 AM – 6 PM, Saturday 8 & Sunday 9 November Venue: Saint Nic’s Gallery 11 St Nicholas Street, Weymouth, Dorset DT4 8AA
