Crashing waves, sandy shores, and expansive skies have been depicted throughout all of art history. As the ultimate symbol of popular leisure, beaches were especially important locales for Impressionists, such as Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir, who often painted plein air, taking advantage of the spontaneity of light and activity. Surrealists, such as Salvador Dali , played on the evocative symbolic qualities of beach scenes, best exemplified in his most famous work, The Persistence of Memory (1931), set in his childhood landscape of the coast of Cadaques in Catalonia. Today, no one is more renowned for using beaches as a subject than photographer Massimo Vitali , who shoots a large format camera from high above Mediterranean beaches in order document social phenomena such as tourism, conformity, and mass gatherings.