Comfort Zone: Photographer Tadao Cern captures sunbathers unawares on a Balkan beach

The Spring 2015 issue of Printed Pages was available with not one, but two exclusive covers from Tadao Cern’s Comfort Zone series. You’ll probably want to collect them both…

Tadao trained as an architect before deciding to swap buildings for pictures – which perhaps explains his unusual approach to capturing images. Comfort Zone was shot on a beach on the Baltic coast using a contraption of Tadao’s own invention. With his camera attached to a shoulder-mounted rig and a long metal pole he was able to pass by his subjects unobserved, photographing them in repose as they lap up the sunshine. Creepy? Maybe, but how else are you meant to get such natural shots of sleeping sunbathers?