Artist: Rob Ball

LBF Contemporary presents 'Everything Beautiful is Far Away,' a solo exhibition by Rob Ball.

"The title of Rob Ball’s exhibition offers a compelling way into a fifteen-year photographic journey that includes over 100 seaside resorts, from the damp, neon-lit promenades of Blackpool to the fading ‘Doo-Wop’ motels of Wildwood, New Jersey. The title implies a distance that is both metaphysical and geographical, capturing the reality of the irregular beauty to be found in these places, and in the idealised notion of beauty that fuels the holiday dream. It evokes the anticipation of future travel, of something to look forward to, an escape from the repetitive nature of work, and its tight regulation of personal time.

For Ball, this investigation feels deeply personal. Having holidayed on the Costas as a child in the 1980s and now living on the Kent coast, he returns to these coastal resorts as a working-class observer: at once connected by history yet critically distant as a photographic visitor. These photographs are not sneering; they avoid stereotyping or taking cheap shots at those enjoying mass-market recreation: the package holiday, the all-inclusive deal. Ball’s meditative approach to image-making, influenced by the New Topographics landscape photographers of the 1970s, stands in stark contrast to many documentary photography projects. One can detect in these photographs the sharp, analytical eye of Lewis Baltz or the Bechers, combined with the more empathetic gaze of Robert Adams. The result is a series of works built on affection and respect, but without nostalgia or naivety."