Else Wachenheimer en twee onbekende vrouwen in vrijetijdskleding voor een strandhuisje op het strand, Bexhill-on-Sea in Engeland, 1913 1913

This photograph from 1913 captures Else Wachenheimer and two unknown women in Bexhill-on-Sea, England. The image presents the women in ‘leisurewear’, seated informally on a pebbled beach. These are the trappings of a new, Edwardian leisure culture. Beachside holidays had become popular with the middle classes, aided by the expansion of the railway network. Seaside resorts such as Bexhill offered carefully managed entertainments. But the informality of this photograph offers a glimpse of other social changes underway. The women are comfortably posed, outside the strictures of formal portraiture. Their clothing suggests a move away from restrictive fashions. To understand the picture better, we would look to periodicals, travel guides, and social surveys. These resources help us to understand the social aspirations of the women, and how these desires were mediated by new commercial opportunities. Such an image reminds us that the meaning of art is always reliant on social and institutional contexts.