C1258 words1:41News Report Mixed AccentsPublished Jun 3, 2026 · Updated Jun 3, 2026

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Documentary photographer Polly Braden has spent over a year chronicling the lives of young people in deprived coastal communities across England and Wales.

Her project, produced in collaboration with the Guardian's Seascape section, forms the basis of the Against the Tide series.

The groundbreaking initiative explores social inequality by focusing on individuals aged sixteen to twenty-five who are growing up on the neglected fringes of the nation.

Braden emphasized that a landmark health report about England's coastal populations had initially sparked her interest in the subject.

As a single mother of teenagers, she had grown increasingly concerned about a generation shaped by austerity, scarred by a pandemic, and now confronting a cost-of-living crisis.

Were it not for that report, she argued, the project might never have materialized in its current form.

The resulting body of work will now form a touring exhibition, opening at the Arnolfini gallery in Bristol in June before moving to Firstsite gallery in Colchester in October.

Among the most striking images is a portrait of Libby, a young woman from Whitehaven in Cumbria.

She stands beneath a brooding sky on a windswept beach, clutching a bag of oranges while a faint rainbow arcs behind her shoulder.

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Braden described the young people she encountered as remarkable individuals whose resilience defied the deprivation surrounding them.

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Not only had they endured systemic neglect, but they had also forged identities amid circumstances that many urban commentators scarcely comprehend.

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Her photographs, she contended, seek to illuminate both the beauty and the bleakness that coexist in these overlooked coastal settings.

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