I live on an island. It's a big island with a bridge to the mainland, but still an island, and I do a lot of beachcombing here. In 2010 I developed an obsession with photographing the things I find. I have always been an artist, but I was not a photographer. The puzzle-like challenge of forming balanced compositions from the endless variety of shapes fascinated me. Capturing their translucence and texture baffled me. I trawled the Web for technical info, built a crude light box and read my camera manual. Eventually I bought a better camera. A grid seemed to be the most logical structure. The more precise the grid, the more effectively the odd shapes and textures were both highlighted and unified.
Although the photos look vaguely scientific, with echos of pressed botany specimens and Linnean classification diagrams, they are not. The logic behind these assemblages is my curiosity about their components. Beachcombing is fundamentally a treasure hunt, an emotional and old-fashioned form of exploration that depends on serendipity, suspense, and glee. To make sense of the things I find, I need to reference marine biology, glass-making history, geology, chemistry, climate, oceanography, local settlement and use patterns ... If science is a method of finding answers, these photos are my way of framing the questions.
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