This article features just one book and wants to pay respect to it and its author.
Water: big rivers, lakes, but most prominently the sea, touch a chord in our hearts. The sea conveys a thought of freedom even to those, who do not want to swim in it or sail in a ship on it. It is enough just being there, close by.
“Beach Life” by Stefan Maiwald is the best book I have read so far on the topic of the beach, the strip of land before the sea. It has the most fitting pictures, the most beautiful colours, a thoughtful, intelligent text, and it transports the beach feeling. ‘The-better than real’ feeling of relaxation, let-go, giddy happiness without reason and complete carelessness that comes with seeing a picture of a beach in dreamy colours.
I mean it when I say ‘seeing a picture of a beach’. Creamy colours, sunrise or sunset, the blue sea – all that brings the sensation of soft sand, warm sun, no work, relaxation.
Being at a beach quite often brings sand sticking to skin wet and oily because of sunscreen, too much sun, too much heat, too much noise, and when you go alone to the beach there is the question where to leave your money and mobile phone when you want to swim. It is not much better when you are alone at a deserted beach – should you just leave everything at the beach? What if you are not so alone after all?
Most times you are not alone, but very close to the next man. The concept of closeness to strangers is something that tourists or guests at a beach often criticize, whilst the people living close to the beach see as normal. It is their beach, so it is normal. Guests should adopt or travel to a resort with private beaches and no interaction with the locals.
“Beach Life” touches on these topics in the introduction. The author acknowledges that the concept of a beach as a place of longing and being at a beach are two different things. He shows that our human desire to try ourselves out is clearly expressed in our desire to swim in the sea, a place where we are completely helpless. If ever a harmless looking wave took you under the surface with an iron grip and then spat you back out, you know what I am talking about. I will never try to swim in the sea again. But I like to look at it. Stefan Maiwald seems to feel the same.
The book itself is inside lovingly designed in hues of peach, rose, white and turquoise. All the texts are in German and English. Topics inside the book are: leisure at the beach, activity at the beach, people at the beach, no people at the beach, style at the beach, and living at the beach. All contain a mix of normal people and celebrity stories, but not in an intrusive way. Everything is described in a positive and charming way.
I must confess, browsing through Stefan Maiwald’s book brings immediate comfort, slows the pulse, lowers the blood pressure, and makes me dream. Dream of those colours, the perfect day, the right to do nothing, to enjoy life without regrets.
The colours in the book do a superb job to enhance that feeling. There is a rosy-orange touch to many of them that comes extremely close to Pantones’s colour of the year 2024, called “Peach Fuzz”. On the Pantone website the colour no. 13-1023 is described by Leatrice Eisemann, Pantone’s Executive Director: “Peach Fuzz captures our desire to nurture ourselves and others. It is a velvety gentle peach tone whose all-embracing spirit enriches mind, body and soul”.
Yes indeed. Many pictures in the book, e.g. the beautiful front and back cover of “Beach Life” do contain that hue. Whoever made the colour schemes of the book did something very right. The peachy quality of the colours gives the viewer much more softness and feeling of comfort than the reality of a glistening sun and a clear white beach does.
The rosy-peachy colour harmonizes with the turquoise of the sea and with the white of the waves. The back cover of the book shows the Kelingking Beach at Nusa Penida in Indonesia. If the beach really looks like that, it is fantastically beautiful. Is it necessary to see it with one’s own eyes to enhance the happy feeling? Not at all.
Stefan Maiwald’s book is a perfect example of what this blog is here for. To make you dream and experience beauty in your mind, even if you do not have the money, or the time, or the wish to travel to all those pictured places yourself. No need to. Your mind can bring you everywhere. Imagined stories are also stories that you have experienced yourself.
All rights to the book belong to:
Maiwald, Stefan: Beach Life, 2023, texts by Stefan Maiwald, editorial coordination, picture research and copy editing by Birthe Vogelmann, published by teNeues Publishing Group, Augsburg, printed in Slovakia, ISBN: 978-3-96171-446-9