NOVEMBER 2022 · ROAM
Worthing
West Sussex coast, England
November on the West Sussex coast is the grey reduced to its elements. Grey sky, grey sea, grey shingle. The beach huts are still there, padlocked and faded. The promenade is functional, wide, largely empty.
The groynes run perpendicular into the sea — heavy timber posts, dark with water, the waves working around them. White foam across the shingle, the sea churning without drama, just continuously. A yellow danger sign bolted to the seawall above the waterline. A red and yellow buoy lying on the stones in the foreground.
The red flag flying on the promenade, the yellow doors — hazard colours against a neutral ground.
Worthing — November 2022
That's where the colour was: the red flag flying on the promenade, the yellow doors on one of the white huts, the buoy on the shingle. Everything else was working in grey-brown. The contrast wasn't subtle and it wasn't accidental — the infrastructure is deliberately marked, hazard colours against a neutral ground. I kept putting that into frames.
The pier shelter sits mid-promenade, Victorian and considered, a lamppost beside it. Beach huts recede in a line into the mist. Concrete changing rooms, plain, on the shingle. The built environment here is orderly in a way that seems slightly at odds with the sea it faces — organised, numbered, maintained, and completely indifferent to the water working the groynes twenty metres away.
Two people on the rocks watching a kite surfer, not talking, watching. The kite a speck above the waves.
Four white beach huts, one with yellow doors. The others plain.
Beach huts receding into misty distance along the shingle
Red flag and beach huts alongside grass promenade with town
Red and yellow buoy lying on shingle beach by the sea
Two people on rocks watching kite surfer across the waves
Wooden groyne extending into the sea across shingle beach
Wooden groyne posts submerged in white waves and foam
White waves churning across shingle, creating turbulent foam
Yellow danger sign on rocky seawall above turbulent beach
Concrete changing rooms building on sparse shingle beach
Four white wooden beach huts, one with yellow doors
Beach huts and flag with pebble beach stretching to the left
Pier shelter building and lamppost on quiet promenade