How a Remote Coastal Town Became the World’s Most Photographed Destination

There is a particular quality of light that falls on this small fishing town in the late afternoon, between four and six on summer evenings, when the sun illuminates the coloured facades along the harbour front with a warmth that renders them almost impossibly beautiful.

Fifteen years ago, perhaps three hundred people knew this. Now three million a year come to see it — or rather, to photograph it.

The local fishing families who have lived here for generations are mostly gone, priced out. The bakery that made the bread everyone came for has been replaced by a café that sells the same flat white as everywhere else. The thing that made the place worth coming to has been photographed to within an inch of its life.