Memory path
- 📍 Location: Cap Blanc-Nez, Escalles, Côte d’Opale, France
- 📅 Date: 2022
A chalk track climbs the flank of the cape in a long curve and ends at the obelisk on the crest. That curve is the picture: it enters at the bottom left, swings across the slope, and delivers the eye to the monument without any help.
I framed with the horizon high so the green flank takes most of the image and the sky is kept to a band. The ground is the journey here; a big sky would have made it a view, and the walk is the point.
Two figures are on the track, roughly a third of the way up. They give the slope its scale and they also give the curve a direction — with people walking up it, the path stops being a shape and becomes a route.
The monument remembers sailors lost in the Channel, and the whole headland has that quality of being a place people come to in order to think about something. I photographed the approach rather than the stone, because the approach is what visitors actually spend their time on.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
