Five artists interpret the remote cool South, taking in Ernest Shackleton’s failed yet epic Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-1917) to the Weddell and Ross seas, and modern-day South Georgia in the South Atlantic Ocean, where the climate crisis has glaciers on the run and biodiversity experts worried

Of the eighty images in the initial selection, eight are loosely of traditional/timber boats. This is down by two, from our unscientific survey in 2022. Interestingly twenty of the eighty images are of foiling boats. Is this the writing on the wall?

A serious of photographs from a month aboard a wooden boat.

Of the eighty images in the selection, nine of them relate to classic or wooden craft. This reinforces my belief that while traditional sailing craft may not be at the cutting edge of sailboat racing, they play an important role in upholding the values of authenticity and custodianship throughout the whole of the panoply of sailing.

So we have Andrew’s interpretation of reality rather than reality itself. His feelings and emotions are woven through these pictures like threads in a tapestry. This is not something a documentary photographer does lightly. It throws your work wide open to judgement.

The boats themselves are the sculptures…. but sometimes too much “trickery” shouts “look at me, the clever photographer” rather than look at this image and understand a little of what it is like to witness this awe-inspiring sight.

The portraits will become an evolving display at the Festival with each participant invited to find their image amongst the sea of faces and handwrite on their print what wooden boat custodianship means to them.

Its rich, and informative, and unlike most coffee table books (I hate that term!) has a substance that makes it cherishable and unlikely to end up on the nature strip on hard rubbish day.