Comfort Zone

Tadao Cern (1983)

Beach sunbathers through overhead views and personal items, with relevance to public behavior and everyday privacy.

Description

Comfort Zone, a photographic project by Tadao Cern, was created in 2013 on a public beach along Lithuania's Baltic coast. Using a camera mounted on a four-meter pole, Cern captured candid overhead shots of sunbathers as they rested, lounged, or slept in the sand, their faces intentionally obscured. The project examines anonymous public behavior within a space of collective leisure.

At its core, Comfort Zone explores the interplay between individual inhibition and collective behavior. Cern observed that beach environments seem to suspend the usual self-consciousness of public life. In these temporary zones of exposure, people unconsciously display private habits and vulnerabilities. By cropping out identifiable features, Cern reorients the viewer toward shared patterns: postures, accessories, gestures, and the quiet material markers of summer routines. The anonymity invites a typological reading, as if an external observer were studying a familiar yet peculiar ritual.

The visual language of the series is shaped by its elevated perspective and natural light. Colorful towels, tanned limbs, and sun-bleached objects create a palette of human presence embedded in sand. The compositions echo still-life arrangements, with each frame presenting a self-contained narrative. Though observational in style, the images convey a restrained sensitivity that complicates their seemingly detached viewpoint.

Technically speaking, the project relied on Cern's self-designed rig: a shoulder-mounted pole outfitted with a camera and a radio trigger. This allowed him to remain at ground level while capturing images from above, minimizing disruption and preserving spontaneity. The resulting large-format prints emphasize detail and scale.

Reception clustered around high-profile showings and prizes: early exhibitions included Saatchi Gallery, London (2014) and Panorama Mesdag, The Hague (2017). Awards such as the Royal Photographic Society’s 158th International Print Exhibition Bronze (2015) and a Fine Art Photography Awards 1st Prize (2015) reinforced its visibility across media.

Behind the work

The initial idea for Comfort Zone came to Tadao Cern when he visited a public beach in Lithuania for the first time in years and observed sunbathers from a bridge, gaining a "perfect bird’s eye view". This unique perspective became central to his aim of creating a "typology of beach culture".

Despite his efforts to remain unnoticed, some people did approach him about his "strange thing on his shoulders". His standard response was that he was "just taking photos of nature," which he technically wasn't lying about as "people are part of nature".

A particularly heartwarming anecdote from the project is that a girl recognised her father in one of the Comfort Zone photos and gifted it to him for Christmas. The father liked it so much he hung it in his bedroom, jokingly adding that "he must lose a little weight".

Quotes by the photographer

"You are never sure about anything and creating art is like playing the lottery. Every ticket is like a blind experiment. The more tickets, the more chances of winning. And only after a win you know what combination was lucky."

"I’ve never focused on someone’s personal life: my work is about society, community, humanity – it’s not about one particular person."

"I wanted to create a typology of beach culture – a kind of study of the phenomenon as if I were investigating a different species. I was thinking about what it would be like to come to Earth as an alien and witness this: what sense would you make of it?"

"The bodies you see are real. They are bodies you don’t often see in magazines, online or on social media. Every day we are bombarded with images of people eating perfectly healthy food and being perfectly in shape, and so many people feel excluded by that."

"In the age of social media, we are obsessed with the concept of individuality and the idea that we must all be different all of the time. These images show that, on some level, we just do what everyone else does. The individual is much less important than the collective or the whole."

"I travelled to other beaches across the world, thinking it would be interesting to document how beach culture differs. What I found is that it doesn’t. We buy the same things, we often read the same things translated into whatever language we speak and we use the same brands a lot of the time. You can see globalisation in action on the beach, and how consumerism shapes all of our lives."

Tags and context

genre

Conceptual ,Street

theme

Leisure & Vacations ,Human Body ,Surveillance ,Human-Nature Relationship

technique

Unposed Subjects ,Elevated Viewpoints ,Natural Light , Stealth Photography ,Typology ,Unconventional Angles

influence

Naturalism ,Humanism ,Deadpan Aesthetic

period

2010s

location