if i’d gotten these in four weeks of shooting a group of strangers i’d be rapt. These images are like a taster of how much talent you have- if you can keep this series up and get something more intimate,maybe focus on one family, well holy hell it will really be something. I’ve sent the link to your website to every photographer i know because i was simply so inspired by looking at it. Looking forward to seeing more of your work.

One thing I think we often forget about as a virtue, and which some photographers seem to be blessed with, is the ability to allow others to feel comfortable by there presence. And its this natural demeanor that places them with in a special place. As your photography will no doubtedly improve, you will find yourself capturing very special moments of people you barely know.

Unfortunately I’m unable to reply at length as the connection here is pretty tempramental.
So, just a couple of points I wanted to make:

The project was shot over a couple of 2 week periods, during the summers of 2008 and 2009. For those of you who mention that the piece was not in depth enough, I agree. I only had a two week window, so I had to work very hard to even get what you see here.

Yes, I acknowledge what some people have said about the novelty of seeing these “unusual” people in close proximity, but in engaging with them on holiday, I was trying to get behind that novelty, and break the usual cliches of a community often misconstrued as austere and formal.

As far as the comparison with Martin Parr, that makes me laugh – I was only just discussing his omniprescence with a friend the other day: Parr has covered everything, and seaside holidays are only one of the many many domains he’s made his mark on.

Patricia – yes it was personal work.

Frank – all was shot digitally, but I’m certainly influenced by the Leica masters!

Sorry again for not writing more extensively and thank you everyone for all your comments. I’ve just started on a fairly daunting 10 month trip, shooting personal work, and I cannot tell you what a boost your compliments have been. I hope some of our paths will cross again in future.

A special thank you to David for finding me out and exposing this piece to the wider world, and also to Ben Roberts for introducing us.

Now running for an overnight bus – (a hot & sweaty) Chloe

These are a fine set of images. Wonderful stuff!

Paul

your comment reminds me of a comment from a reader at my newspaper once many years ago…i had taken a picture of a black boy and a white girl who were watching a parade and happened to be standing side by side…and the reader wrote “how dare you , flaunting your lack of prejudice”….after that , i realized that reading reader comments was simply not productive in terms of any picture choices…an editor would be frozen solid if he or she tried to “play” the audience for what they might think…in any case, i am pleased that you already knew that the Hasidic were the same as everyone else on holiday….

Congratulations on being published on Burn. There were a few really stunning photos, the portraits of the children, the diver and the last one were excellent. I think it stopped there for me though. The other images were flat in composition and lighting. I did really enjoy your website and think you have great skill but the flat shots pulled down the overall essay for me. As David would say some were pictures as opposed to photographs. It is difficult to compare directly but having seen Jason’s essay I thought it was more revealing and engaging. I guess it is hard for us to imagine exactly what you were trying to communicate or if you were just there to purely document. I guess my question is what was your intent, this is missing from your artist’s statement. Just out of curiosity are you shooting film or digital. There isn’t often a lot of dialogue about methodology in the comments, but for me it adds another layer to the story. I don’t want to go out an a limb here but I am thinking Leica with kodachrome.

Frank

There are several of your images that I have really enjoyed…Picture number 7 is absolutely great and I also very much liked picture 1, 9 and 20. Some of the others in my view did not live up to the level of these four and somehow, I was left overall wanting something more from your essay beyond these vacation shots of which a few seem a bit “ordinary” with the exception of the individuals are in the photographs… I would really have these four images as inspiration to go back there and dig deeper and maybe show other situations , ideally penetrate even more into the community if at all possible…. Hope you carry on with this work…

Eric

But, wait a minute – wasn’t Freteur’s essay from Palestine a parallel, everyday portrayal as well? Aha, I get it now. People in conflict are just like us – we, who have the luxury of viewing from outside. Maybe Sontag is right, and we grow weary of the images of violence, losing our humanistic sympathies along the way. What is left to shake us up are essays with a connectedness of familiarity.

The Burn editors are in overdrive, after all.

(Number 7 is an exquisite image – that it wasn’t chose for a “Selected Photo” led to the thoughts above…)

I made a mad drive once through the Welsh countryside with my ex-wife from Kington to a rainy windswept Aberystwyth. Spent an hour there and did the hair raising drive back. So in a very small, six degrees of separation sort of way I have a small connection to this story, which is something I always like. Once again, thank you BURN for bringing the world to us.

The tradition of the conservative sects of Judaism packing up their cultural and religious equipment and going off on holiday is fairly common, and it’s pretty interesting to see the lengths they will go (noted in your introduction) to recreate their home lifestyles in a new setting. I would like to see some of that.