Rising Sea Levels
Brighton, UK, October 2008 & February-March 2009
With this project, I took the West Pier in Brighton as an imaginary landscape struck by rising sea levels.
How do you photograph a phenomenon as slow as the sea level rise? How do you approach a phenomenon whose scale is redefining coastlines around the world at yet at such a slow pace?
Piers connect the land to the sea. They also are at the forefront of adverse weather. The West Pier in particular consisted of half-emerged remnants when I first went to Brighton. The structure was deliberately set on fire at least two times and was severely hit by a series winter storms afterwards.
I photographed the Pier at low tide and at night inspired by the often apocalyptic dark skies of the movies envisioning our future in 20, 30, 100 years from now.
The project first came to fruition in the course of a five-day workshop under the patronage of Magnum Photos at the University of Brighton. Accidentally, Carl De Keyzer was one of the three tutors on the workshop and he was working on a similar project, later published under the title Moments before the Flood.
Brighton, UK, October 2008 & February-March 2009
With this project, I took the West Pier in Brighton as an imaginary landscape struck by rising sea levels.
How do you photograph a phenomenon as slow as the sea level rise? How do you approach a phenomenon whose scale is redefining coastlines around the world at yet at such a slow pace?
Piers connect the land to the sea. They also are at the forefront of adverse weather. The West Pier in particular consisted of half-emerged remnants when I first went to Brighton. The structure was deliberately set on fire at least two times and was severely hit by a series winter storms afterwards.
I photographed the Pier at low tide and at night inspired by the often apocalyptic dark skies of the movies envisioning our future in 20, 30, 100 years from now.
The project first came to fruition in the course of a five-day workshop under the patronage of Magnum Photos at the University of Brighton. Accidentally, Carl De Keyzer was one of the three tutors on the workshop and he was working on a similar project, later published under the title Moments before the Flood.
