In the warmer seasons, beaches draw crowds of tourists and coastal residents. A beach in winter might seem like a contradiction — and in many ways it is — but why should that make it any less worthy of being photographed? Raul Guillermo found something extraordinarily beautiful and enigmatic in precisely this contradiction, and so created a series of photographs entitled Plage Isolée.
In these photographs, Raul conveys solitude and seclusion, isolation from other people, and the beauty of a world without human presence.
Raul Guillermo — raulguillermo.com — is a Peruvian fine-art photographer currently based in Paris. He studied photography at the SPEOS International Photographic School from 2016 to 2017.
In the project Plage Isolée, Raul photographs beaches in winter, capturing their beauty in the absence of people. It all began in 2015, when Raul was living in Bordeaux and spending every weekend by the ocean, enjoying the solitude and the company of his own thoughts — and it was then that the idea for the project first took shape.
In 2016, having decided to begin the project, he set out to travel along the winter beaches of northern French towns: Deauville, Étretat, Le Havre, Saint-Pierre, Marseille, Biarritz, and many others. In Raul's own words, his love of the sea took root in childhood, when he lived near the ocean — it was his favourite place for meditation and the search for inspiration, and so it remains to this day.
In these photographs, Raul explores solitude and seclusion, isolation from other people, and the beauty found in the absence of the living. One of the project's aims is to challenge the stereotype surrounding introverts. Solitude is not the mark of weakness, the artist believes. For Raul, such moments are a source of inspiration and strength.
In 2017, the photograph we selected for the cover became a finalist in the The Independent Photographer competition, in the Emerging Talent category.
Raul has captured the beauty of these places in their unfamiliar emptiness, revealing another side of beach life — one that few people stop to consider. The buildings and spaces seem to shift from their everyday state into something altogether otherworldly.
If you are drawn to serene, minimalist photography, we recommend taking a look at our feature on Paradis by Arnaud de Puyfontaine; you may also enjoy our piece on solitude in the Alaskan landscapes of Niav McElroy.
