Deprivation, resilience and a giant bunny: Polly Braden on capturing the ‘beauty and bleakness’ of young lives on the coast

In the Guardian’s Against the tide series, the documentary photographer got to know some ‘amazing’ 16- to 25-year-olds living on the fringes of England and Wales, and now her work is the centre of a new touring exhibition

It was while reading a landmark report about the poor health of people who live on the English coast that documentary photographer Polly Braden had her big idea. “I was just blown away by it,” she says. “I thought: this is about England. And it affects all of us.”

At the same time, as a single mother of teenagers, she had become interested in the lives of young people who had grown up under austerity, lived through a pandemic and were becoming adults during a cost-of-living crisis.