©Gautier Deblonde

I was sitting watching a climate change programme on BBC World recently, they’d sent a shipload of artists, authors, photographers, architects and scupltors to the Arctic to examine their responses to the ‘C’ word-Climate Change. It was interesting to see the ideas and thoughts these artists had, their responses and their works of art that came out of the visit, some in situ in the Arctic, and some back in UK.

One of the artists was photographer Gautier Deblonde. I’ve seen his name a few times over the years, he was the photographer for Lynne Ramsay’s ‘Morvern Callar’ movie. Anyway, on this BBC programme he was showing some images of Spitzbergen, (a place I got asked to go last October’ish to photograph on a movie, but then the job offer was retracted unfortunately, the film financers thought I didn’t have enough experience…), and I found that on his website he has a set of his Arctic pcis on show. From which I’ve borrowed the above images. Some beautiful images..

And seeing his pics got me to thinking…I’ve a box in my office, sitting on my shelf, with 95 rolls of 120 colour negative in it, all processed but not edited. I shot it all in the Southern Ocean/Antarctica last year when I was there for 84 days. 95 rolls of 6×6 pics of icebergs, oceans, parts of the ship I was on, weather, sky and albatrosses and CapeTown port. Looking at Deblonde’s pics of Spitzbergen made me think it is high time I edited and scanned this box of negs of mine. There’s another project in there, in that box, just sitting in the dark, unloved, waiting to see the light. The pics were shot to be part of the same series as those already on my website, ‘Port of Call’, all shot on my ship based assignments, always looking out from the ship towards the sea, the skies, the ports of the world. Considering I come from a land locked family I’ve done a lot of ship/water based assignments over the years, and enjoyed almost every one. They’re great, great to get away from everything, great to get fresh air, to see raw nature, and to have the expedition, the excitement, the real sense of a voyage, of a trip travelled, and it culminates in the great feeling of gliding back into port at the end, the engines purring at low rev’s, crew tired but given a burst of energy by the sight of land and all that it holds.