Sometimes, when you take a photograph, you know immediately what it’s about. Other times, you’re not so sure. This was one of those times.
But hold on, you say, how can you not know what you’re photographing? Well, you may be able to tell what’s in the photograph but it’s perhaps not always so easy to say what the photograph’s about.
On the sands at Crosby near Liverpool, there’s an Anthony Gormley installation: Another Place. It consists of 100 life sized metal statues of Gormley stretching for miles across the area between high and low tides. At high tide the figures are mostly covered. At low tide, they stand clear. Most days, there’s someone walking out to examine one of the figures, but they soon enough scuttle back to the shore. The figures just stay there getting slowly submerged as the tide rolls in.
In the distance, there’s Welsh mountains, wind turbines and clouds all heading for the horizon.
The light was crystal clear, bouncing off the sand as if it were snow. There’s a clarity about it all that you often get on cold days by the sea, so you could see for ever.
But why? That’s not so clear. One day maybe …
More back stories
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A Longing for Distant Shores, 2015
It does seem I get inspired by bad weather. I just needed 50 seconds between squalls to get the long exposure shot, and I wasn’t getting them.
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Piemme, Bologna, 2006
I remember feeling quite overwhelmed by the blue and didn’t really notice anything else for a while. I knew I had to take this photograph.
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Chad! No! Manchester, 2012
“But it’s just a picture of a wall!” It’s also a picture of ambition moderated by pragmatism, of nostalgia, of seeing how things were, how things are now and how they got there.
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Safe Homecomings, 2016
Thoughts of home after the uncertainty of carefully picking your way up river past sandbars and shoals.
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Wrong end of the telescope, 2019
You get the telescope out to try and see more clearly but it doesn’t help. It’s the wrong way round. And they’re getting further away.
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Time’s Arrow, 2016
There was something about the line of gravestones not just leading to the door but also taking you back in time as you walk along beside them.
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Late bar, Venice, 2008
By daylight the scene is nothing to write home about. But at night, nearly midnight, all those extraneous elements and colours just disappeared, and the atmosphere of the Venetian night took over.
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The Serpents’ View, 2015
Has something just happened? Or is something about to happen? Or perhaps nothing ever happens up here in the waiting room on the roof of the known world.
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Lower Gilmore Bank, Edinburgh, 2019
It’s the sort of picture I’ve always longed to be able to make – technically and compositionally appealing.
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The Fin, 2011
Way back in 2011, I was fascinated by the buildings in Manchester – mainly the Victorian and Edwardian commercial architecture. There was lots to go at, and much that was in an attractive state of dilapidation. But there’s lots of modern buildings too and I regret not photographing more while I was there.
