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Shoreline by Susan Derges

Shoreline by Susan Derges
Accession Code: wu0798
Title: Shoreline
Date completed: 1998
Classification: Photograph
Location Name: Millburn House
Location Description:

Susan Derges places light sensitive paper, supported in aluminium slides, on the shoreline at night and exposes it to a microsecond of flashlight when a wave passes across it. Ambient light affects the colour of the images which ranges from blue at full moon to green at new moon. Stormy weather conditions whip up sand in the water, which appears as dark vortices and spirals within the image of the wave.

'The resulting prints thus draw into themselves not merely the local phenomena of the beating sea but also the more distant presences of air, sky and atmosphere, evoking the wider ambience of the biosphere - never without an implicit human presence, perennially curious as observer.'