Athens-based photographer Mariza Kapsabeli travelled to Scheveningen, the coast of The Hague, to document the fragility of a purpose-structured seaside town when it portrays freely its own identity.
As a contemporary photographic study of these eccentric structures, I wanted to depict the area in the least commercially and weather ideal conditions.
The sense of the place most often promoted and imposed is an image full of life on the contrary of the reality in which loneliness and silence dominate.
A pier should be a runway to the sea, a hypnotic element, a cultural icon for the seaside towns. It should have the right to exacerbate and breath its own reality through its unique sounds of silence, emptiness and in general authenticity of its own right, beyond the pre-determinedand ‘must’ images created mainly for commercial uses.
However, like most seasonal tourist attractions, which are driven by profitability goals and economic exploitation, it transforms to a structure that justifies its existence only for a minor fragment of time.
The sense of abandonment and decay is prevalent during off-season, when the lights are down and the voices are absent.
