New Ways of Looking at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve

This anthology was produced to help raise money for the Friends of Rye Harbour. As mentioned in previous posts one of the challenges, albeit an encouraging one, of working in the area is that lots of artists have attempted to do justice to the area. I thought it would be interesting and perhaps inspirational to sample some of the work (as well as supporting the Reserve in the process).

The first thing that struck me was actually the quote from DW Meinig in the introduction, as to how landscape is “composed of not only what lies before our eyes but what lies within our heads” (Lovell, 2021). In other words the anthology presents a variety of subjective interpretations of the view, filtered through personal perspectives that are culturally developed. Of course this is not a novel idea. But as an extension it also echoes one of my previous thoughts that one of the best ways to represent an area is to do so with a variety of approaches – for example walking, collecting, writing, photographing, mapping, etc….

I also note the local word CHATTERING for the white marks found on shingle pebbles. This has a neat equivalence in the landscape talking back to us, via the noise the stones make as they wash together and the story that can be read in the resulting signs of interaction. On a micro level, the intermittent background noise of crunching wash leaving tiny scratches on small stones – but repeated time after time for periods that extend beyond human imagination, the total reshaping of the coast leading to loss of towns, habitats and livelihoods.

On the various imagery:

Photography by Peter Greenhalf – a local artist whose gallery I must visit (only open I think on Saturdays). These are silver gelatin prints, printed variously from a high tone approach to the seascape with architectural details of the harbour channel wall as it meets the open water to a more heavy-handed, contrasty take on the Mary Stanford Lifeboat Station, presumably taken at very low tide with a long lens to compress the view and include all the breakers. Of particular interest is the toning on these prints, which for Tempest approaches a cyanotype with its use of blue, but also incorporates warmer tones for the Old Lifeboat Station (split toning?).

There also some digital photographs of lichen, nature made abstract, which are pretty but perhaps not particularly novel.

Most of the work is not photography, although this is useful in a way – I notice how other artists, without the luxury/hindrance of representing everything in the frame, emphasise chosen elements in their frame and often work with a restricted/targeted palette. Images of oystercatchers work particularly well here, and the red, white and black colours echoes those of the famous red hut.

Of course this is not impossible to do with photography – clever composition can get you some of the way, and a lot more can be done in post-production. Care must be taken since adapting the key photographic characteristic of precise representation can be intriguing but can simply look over-processed and wrong (in a way the brain will identify instantly, almost without knowing why at least at first). Night photography combined with light painting and long exposures can approach the painterly starting point of a blank (if black) canvas.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Lovell, J. (2021) New Ways of Looking at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve – an anthology of poems and pictures. Sussex: Sea Swallow Press