Whitby Goth Weekend

Whitby Goth Weekend is a twice-yearly gathering of the Goth community in the popular seaside town on the North East coast of England. Whitby is a rural town with a great seafaring history, which is bound up in mythology and storytelling. Not only does it have the famous literary connection to Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”, but it’s monastic heritage and location on the edge of the North York Moores strengthens its Gothic character. The weekend attracts the most committed Goths, promenading the cobbled streets and harbour in their magnificent outfits to express their devotion to this rebellious subculture, which emerged in the early 1980’s alongside bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus and Sisters of Mercy.

The photographs wittily observe the Gothic invasion of a traditional seaside town, capturing the Goths among the gaiety and simple pleasures of the English seaside. The sartorially elegant Goths are pictured eating fish and chips, playing in the sea, buying sticks of rock and taking snapshots of each other outside the quaint shopfronts and hand painted signage of the cobbled Whitby streets.

The book is accompanied with an essay by artist and writer Wayne Burrows, whose work deals with music cultures, the occult and the blurring of historical fact and fiction. The essay delves into Whitby’s gothic associations, locating the essence of Goth via an exploration of music, literature and history that links the Polynesian adventures of James Cook to Thatcherism and Doom Metal.

Title: Whitby Goth Weekend
Artist: David Severn
Essay writer: Wayne Burrows
Cover artwork: screen printed cover with linocut artwork by Becky Wood on the reverse
Size: 152 x 217 mm
Format and binding: softcover, singer Sewn
Type of printing and paper: HP Indigo on uncoated GF Smith paper
Number of pages and images: 32 pages, 25 images
Designer: Beam Editions
Imprint: Beam Editions
Edition: First
Print run: 200
ISBN: 978-1-9164200-4-5