'Blackpool Beach #2, Lancashire, 25 July 2008' by Simon Roberts forms part of his 'We English' series (2007-08).

For the past decade, Brighton-based photographer Simon Roberts (b. 1974) has been documenting the British landscape and how it reflects social, political and cultural change. His multifaceted large-scale works put the viewer firmly in the role of detached observer and explore the shared relationship between people and place, and ideas of national identity and belonging.

Two of his projects, 'We English' and 'Merrie Albion'– a year-long tour of England to photograph the pastimes of ordinary people, and a mission to record Britain’s remaining 58 pleasure piers – have taken him to beaches from Bournemouth to Blackpool. Photographed using a large-format field camera, his images are rich in detail, pattern and meaning, and show the importance of the seaside as a communal social space. They also reveal evidence of acute societal and economic decline, and in some cases, rebirth.