Caroline Marrack British, b. 1954
A photograph is a picture of life, a catch it if you can moment, a witness to a particular time and place which can last hundreds of years – a small legacy. Cornwall is my homeland, my mothers, her mothers, and her Irish mothers adopted land. Before them there are no photographs only gravestones.
I’m living by the sea again, in a pleasant coastal town where people come and go and I too feel like a visitor. I leave my bed and walk straight to a cafe – the one that smiles with it’s customers; a stalling ritual before walking into the weather to photograph someone or something that embodies the tone of the day. A girl sitting in the sand and a sturdy clump of seagrass both catch my eye – it’s the draw of the light, accepting that some landscapes, like some people and animals, do not yield to the click of a camera anymore than they embrace a stranger.
Physical engagement matters. I never use a zoom lens which seems more like spying than observing. Instead I walk close to the sea where young men slip in and out of the waves like sheeny black sharks. I gauge exposure focusing one eye on the boys and the other on the quick rising surf slapping at my knees.
The American photographer Walker Evans, who I admire, said he would never photograph beaches or sand dunes, people at leisure, people just lingering. I know why he said it but here life is different. I live on the north Atlantic coast in the twenty first century – a nature space for all forms of life to live and linger. It’s my reality, as real as poor town America.