In con­trast to other realms of public space, which are sub­ject to inces­sant social con­trols, it seems all of these fac­tors and norms are thrown out when one is at the beach. With his series “Com­fort Zone,” the Lithua­nian pho­to­gra­pher Tadao Cern (born 1983) has docu­men­ted the beach as a place where the pre­vai­ling con­cept of beauty and the other­wise fier­cely guar­ded sense of pri­vacy are both irre­le­vant. Dozing sun­ba­thers, initi­ally pho­to­gra­phed wit­hout their know­ledge, have con­struc­ted a her­me­tic micro­cosm atop their color­ful beach towels that makes their phy­si­cal pre­sence unas­sail­able. The range of beach­wear fashions and the selec­ted access­ories, the con­tor­ti­ons of the slee­pers’ bodies, as well as the dif­fe­ren­ces of their phy­si­cal appearan­ces come toge­ther as still-life arran­ge­ments cau­sing an aes­the­tic ele­va­tion of the beach and its tem­porary inha­bi­tants. The mundane and the uni­que, the ordi­nary and the art­ful, the sub­lime and the (unin­ten­tio­nally) comi­cal melt into a fasci­na­ting dia­gram of human life­styles and variety.

The work of Tadao Cern has been shown at the Saatchi Gal­lery, Lon­don. The Gal­lery for Con­tem­porary Pho­to­gra­phy cele­bra­tes the Ger­man pre­miere of his now world famous series, “Com­fort Zone.”