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Alison Shaw
Seascapes #2

I live on an island seven miles out to sea, reachable only by boat or plane. The island of Martha's Vineyard, just south of Cape Cod, has been my year-round home for over thirty years, and my emotional home for nearly fifty. In this collection of photographs, I'm seeking to explore the essence of an island in its relationship to the sea.

Twenty years ago my first collection of black and white photographs was published in book form, along with the essays of Henry Beetle Hough, who for 65 years was editor of the Vineyard Gazette. Mr. Hough described the island simply "We are the land in the sea that lies beyond the land." What makes us unique is on the one hand so obvious yet on the other hand so essential to our identity ­ the fact that we are surrounded by water. The shoreline, the ever-changing undulating line where the land meets the sea, is what definesour boundaries. The horizon, that sweeping horizontal juncture where the sea meets the sky, is the world we look out upon.

These images are of the places where the land meets the sea and the sea meets the sky. In my photographs I am looking not so much for the elements themselves but for their essence. To be too literal would take away all of the magic, and the depth of feeling. This magic began for me when I was a summer kid, and my love for this place has only deepened with time. The emotions surrounding this island have always been very powerful and real for me. My images are about those emotions.

I have chosen a very formalist, minimalist, deliberate way of composing the images. To me, the square format provides balance and symmetry, further enhanced by the deliberate placement of the horizon dead center in nearly all of the photos. The framed prints are intended to be hung side by side, thus implying a continuous horizon line that runs throughout the grouping of images. While a single image can certainly hang on a wall all by itself, a synergy occurs when three or more images are displayed together.