Castle Island, Kennedy Library & Harbor Point—Boston's Waterfront
Where land meets the water and the famed meet the rest of us
What lies between water and land?
A problem that constantly vexes me as a photographer and human being is knowing and photographing the boundary between land and water.
How permeable is that interface, how graduated, how dangerous, and is its enticement primeval?
I recall viewing one of the only serious Woody Allen movies, Interiors, decades ago, stunned by a climactic scene: a woman kills herself by walking into the water, as happened in the movie about Virginia Woolf, The Hours, which ends with her suicide by drowning. This mirrored Woolf’s actual life.
About 20 years ago during one of my many winter sojourns to the coastal fishing-artist community of Gloucester Massachusetts, on a solitary walk around midnight, standing at edge of the Atlantic Ocean, I felt the water draw me to it. The attraction was nearly irresistible. I was not suicidal, not depressed, not unhappy—indeed happy in Gloucester with the photography and movie editing I was doing that winter. I resisted wading into the frigid water. Was I invited to reverse the evolution of the human species?
So I continue to ponder: what is that water-land boundary, what does it represent, how best to photograph it?
my photos of castle island from 2012
photos by skip schiel & teeksa photography
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