Synopses & Reviews
This fascinating book culled from the archives of The Mariners' Museum features 100 historical photographs depicting the complex, often deeply passionate relationships of mariners with their vessels and the sea. Selected and introduced by the preeminent photographic critic of our time, each photograph chronicles a fragment of the mariner's experience over the past 200 years -- shipbuilding, the making of a wooden skiff, commercial fishing and whaling, amateur sailing, deep-sea diving, naval encounters, and much more.
In his introduction, John Szarkowski shares his artistic rationale for selecting the particular images that appear in the book. The mix is eclectic: some arc the deliberate work of famous photographers while for others the photographer was simply a chronicler with a camera and a remarkable eye for composition and visual impact. Applying electronic and other techniques that he created and which he alone has mastered, Richard Benson has transformed the archival photographs into images of profound visual depth and emotional resonance. Benson's essays, which accompany the photographs, unify image and story in a richly evocative vignette of time and place, of historical, societal, and individual meaning.
This book is the catalogue for a traveling exhibition that will open in December 1997 at The Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia.