Rob Ball
Lives and works in Kent, UK
For over fifteen years, Rob Ball has been making photographs at the coast. Working across more than 100 seaside resorts — from Blackpool to Coney Island — his long-term documentary practice examines the rhythms of the shoreline and the changes that arise from seasonal and generational shifts. Ball's richly detailed colour work focuses on fractured communities and ageing infrastructure, evoking the pastel hues, faded arcades, and worn carpets of a landscape in flux. His images resist nostalgia while acknowledging it, demonstrating that despite chronic underinvestment, the commercial coastline endures — sustaining a vernacular culture that is at once familiar and increasingly fragile. His work represents an important and often overlooked part of British culture — a vital record of coastal spaces as sites of communion, but also as environments vulnerable to economic and environmental change.
Rob Ball is a Reader in Photography at Canterbury Christ Church University in the UK. He is currently working on his PhD titled: From Blackpool to Benidorm: Visual Cultures of Repair, Authenticity, and Demotic Leisure. His works can be found in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Martin Parr Foundation, National Portrait Gallery, University of the Arts Collection Archive, as well as numerous private collections worldwide.
EDUCATION
2014 PGCE (HE) / Fellow of The HEA Canterbury Christ Church University, UK
2006 Masters Degree in Photography University of the Arts, London, UK
1996 NUJ Press Photography (HND) Norton College, Sheffield, UK
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2026 UPCOMING ‘Everything Beautiful is Far Away,’ LBF Contemporary, London, UK (Solo)
2025 ‘Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style,’ Design Museum, London, UK (Group)
2024 ‘By the seaside,’ The Photographers’ Gallery, London, UK (Group)
2023 ‘Signs of the Seaside,’ Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft, Ditchling, UK (Group)
2023 ‘Arcade Britannia,’ Exhibition London Design Biennale, London, UK (Group)
2022 ‘Jaywick,’ Martello Tower, Jaywick Sands, UK (Group)
2022 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London, UK (Group)
2022 ‘Silent Coast Exhibition,’ The Photographers’ Gallery Print Sales, London, UK (Solo)
2019-2021 ‘Seaside: Photographed,’ Turner Contemporary / John Hansard Gallery / The Grundy, UK (Group)
2018 ‘L'espace secret,’ Martigny, Switzerland (Solo)
2016 ‘Dreamlands,’ Coney Island Museum, USA (Solo)
2015 ‘Dreamlands,’ The Photographers' Gallery, London, UK (Solo)
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
2025 ‘Benidorm,’ Hoxton Mini Press (Monograph)
2023 ‘Arcade Carpets Bookwork,’ Collected by The V & A Museum and Martin Parr Foundation
2022 ‘This Pleasant Land,’ Hoxton Mini Press (Contributing artist)
2022 ‘Silent Coast,’ Photo Editions (Monograph)
2020 ‘Don't Press Print,’ UWE Centre for Fine Print Research (Contributing chapter)
2019 ‘Funland,’ Hoxton Mini Press (Monograph)
2019 ‘Seaside: Photographed,’ eds.Val Williams and Karen Shepherdson, Thames and Hudson
2018 ‘Dreamlands,’ The Journal of Photography and Culture (Article)
2017 ‘Coney Island,’ Dewi Lewis, long listed for Deutsche Borse Prize (Monograph)
2015 Dreamlands published by Dewi Lewis (Monograph)