Low Tide
Year
2024
Kind
Documentary
Place
Northumberland, England
Credit
Commissioned for a coastal trust (sample)
Film and camera
Ilford HP5 and Portra 160, Leica M6
The people who work the shore between tides: fishermen, bait diggers, and a woman who walks the same beach every morning.
For six hours twice a day the coast between Amble and Boulmer belongs to the people who know it. I spent a year following the tide tables with them.
Some of the people in these pictures fish for a living. Others dig for bait, collect sea coal or simply walk. All of them talked about the sea as a neighbour rather than a view.
The commission
The series was made for a coastal trust’s 50th year and shown in the village halls along the route, not in a gallery. Every person photographed received a print.
Low tide, and the old posts walk out to the sea.
Beach huts shut up for the winter.
Pots, buoys and rope on the harbour wall.
Mending nets on the quay.
A winter walk on the empty beach.
Gulls following the boat home.
Sea fog over the groyne.
Boats on their moorings at first light.
Hauling the boat up the shingle.
