10 - Viva Lewes

david
JarmaN
good old Sussex by the sea
Michael George was born in Wales and read English
at University College, Oxford, but much of his
career as a publisher and freelance photographer has
been spent in New York. His first solo exhibition,
Manhattan, took place there in 1981, and he went on
to become a naturalised American citizen. Back in
England, he has settled in Cooden, which is rather
like David Hockney exchanging California for
Bridlington. So it is appropriate that Michael York
has provided the foreword to George’s latest book of
photographs, Sussex by the Sea, for although resident
in California ‘for the past almost 40 years’, he
also has deep roots in Sussex – prep school in Hurstpierpoint,
holidays with grandparents at Telscombe,
honeymooning in Brighton and many visits to his
parents in Lewes (they lived on St Martin’s Lane).
It ought, perhaps, to be pointed out that Michael
George has found so much to fascinate and inspire
his artistic eye in his local surroundings, that all
166 photographs in Sussex by the Sea are taken in
East Sussex. Broadly speaking, the narrative of the
book follows the coast from Rye to Brighton with
occasional forays inland to favourite spots such as
the tea gardens at Litlington, Bateman’s and Herstmonceux
Castle. Lewes is represented not only by a
panoramic view of the town from the castle keep but
also by more intimate details; two front doorways on
Abinger Place, a study of Castlegate House (home to
the poet and expert on bicameral legislatures, William
Wyndham).
It is this combination that informs the whole book.
In Bexhill, for example, stunning photographs of the
De La Warr Pavilion are complemented by scenes
from the annual Spring Fair at St George’s United
Reform Church and a newspaper placard in Sackville
Road (‘School Dinner Lady Killed by Wasp’).
Michael George provides an incisive commentary
that never distracts from the actual photographs; informative
but not drily so. I was aware, for example,
W W W. V i Va L E W E s . C o M
Photo of beachy Head courtesy of Michael George. book available at skyLark and Kings Framers
c o l u m n
of the epitaph that Spike Milligan intended for his
own gravestone, but I was unaware that the Celtic
Cross tombstone in Winchelsea’s Parish Churchyard,
which marks the last resting place of the
‘godfather of alternative comedy’, really does bear
the legend ‘I told you I was ill’. The inscription is,
however, in Gaelic, since the Diocese of Chichester
refused permission for it to be in English.
The whole book abounds in delightful contrasts;
sumptuously beautiful landscape studies and seascapes
nestling alongside photographs of Brighton
and Eastbourne beaches that confirm one’s gut
instinct that the average English physique should
seldom be allowed to be anything short of fully
clothed. Double-page spreads allow for some witty
juxtapositions. A polychrome ceramic roundel in
high relief, one of several such roundels designed by
Gilbert Bayes for Hastings’ White Rock Theatre,
that depicts an ancient warrior, helmeted and breastplated,
stripped for combat with sword purposefully
outstretched, is matched by two youngsters on the
beach in baseball caps, their spades deployed to
similarly determined effect in the early stages of
sandcastle construction.
Sussex by the Sea is dedicated to the photographer’s
mother, Mrs Megan George. A Bakewell tart that
she baked, depicted on page 65, looks scrumptious!
(Monterey Press, £25, www.montereypress.co.uk)
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