p34-37_EI8HT_V4N2.bella_RK
29/7/05
2:45 pm
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>Story Bella Bathurst
The Wreckers
There are two ways of shooting the sea: you can be on it, or you can be in it. Though some divers have started to exploit the potential of underwater photography for art, they usually content themselves with factual shots of coral formations or outrageous fish. Photography from on shore or on deck is a different matter. From Gustave le Gray through Harry Callahan, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Rineke Dijkstra, Joel Meyerowitz and Clifford Ross, photographers have found different ways of ordering the three basic elements of shore, sea and sky, and have learned the one essential truth about recording the ocean: no one ever takes pictures of water, they just take pictures of the light reflected off water. Down beyond the edges of mainland Britain, one family has been photographing those three elements for five generations. Instead of concentrating on naked seascapes, however, the Gibson family found a lucrative specialisation: shipwrecks. John Gibson (1827-1920) was a fisherman who taught himself how to use a camera. By 1866, he had learned enough to leave the sea and set up his own business as a general photographer who coincidentally took pictures of wrecks where and when they occurred. His sons Alexander and Herbert joined him in the business, and in time Alexander’s son James took over the studios in Penzance and St Mary’s. Frank, James’s son, succeeded him. Now he has in his turn been succeeded by his daughter, Sandra. Gibson-Kyne stands on a sunny sidestreet in the centre of Hugh Town in the Scilly Isles. It’s a quiet place with an old-fashioned ’60s fascia that doubles as bookseller, stationer and gallery. On the wall at the back of the shop are a series of 9 x 12 black and white photographs, each showing a wreck with the name and date of its demise written underneath. Most are of sailing ships, which – given that sails had been almost entirely eliminated in the larger vessels by the early years of the 20th century – makes most of the photographs impressively ancient. Many have evidently been taken by a large-format camera with a long exposure in difficult conditions. In one or two, the camera seems to have been shaken by some unseen force. The sea has been blurred to a silvery softness, sails have slapped back at just the wrong moment, and in one print the entire body of the ship seems to have been caught just at the point of dissolving into the water. In others, everything is crisp and coldly detailed. Ships with their decks almost entirely submerged sail into bays above which wait crowds of sightseers in bowler hats and pelisses, ships with their sterns already submerged, ships embayed, ships half-drowned in sand, ships apparently sailing straight into the base of lighthouses. Some look at ease in their unintended resting places, as if they’d just taken a brief stop in an unexpected mooring. Others are torn and piecemeal, their masts snapped midway, their sails slopping over the decks. What is striking about the pictures is not only their cumulative effect – enough wrecks to fill a wall – or what they depict, but their loveliness. Shipwrecks in other parts of the country generally end up with nothing more than a grainy, indeterminate shot taken in bad weather from a difficult angle by the local newspaper’s resident snapper. Usually there are rocks in the way or the storm has obscured the detail, or the ship itself is too far away to be clear. Even when the pictures do reveal more than just storm-force conditions, most 20th century shipping doesn’t exactly inspire poetry. Bespoke pleasure yachts and heritage vessels might be able to afford to make themselves look good, but a single-hulled bulk carrier or a multi-ton freighter isn’t going to bother with cosmetics. In these photographs, however, there is a kind of melancholy beauty. Not, one supposes, that the crew and the passengers of these wrecks cared much for looks as they sped towards their graves. But in showing
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