Sons of a beach

Are we all children of some beach? I'd say no: my father hated the beach and the sea, while my mother loved them dearly. The number of "beach children" is growing year after year, however, and I'm having more and more difficulty finding deserted or quiet beaches, even in the off-season. That it's a popular theme is also demonstrated by Martin Parr's famous, multi-year work "Beach Therapy," which focuses on the often grotesque population on many beaches around the world. I began recording my visual impressions of beach children many years ago, at the beginning of my passion for photography: I still remember my first photo, a rather plump woman in her fifties wearing a large, light-colored hat. The title recalls the unflattering and seemingly inappropriate epithet, but it deliberately refers to the potential confusion of terminology I often encounter in the English language, and, perhaps in a twisted way, to the confusion that animates almost all the world's beaches. A babel of people of different bodies and ages, though not of different languages. Even those of us who hate the sea and beaches are still largely made of water, and given my love for the sea and rivers, I gave free rein to the idea of photographing the theatricality of the beaches' aquatic offspring. The stage is obviously open, like in Greek theaters.