Cliff walk
- 📍 Location: Cliffs of Ault, Picardy, France
- 📅 Date: 2021
The chalk runs north in one unbroken wall, and the beach at its foot is nothing but flint and pale boulders the sea has rolled smooth. I chose black and white before I chose the frame. On this coast the colour is a thin grey-green that adds nothing, while the tonal distance between wet shingle and lit chalk is enormous, and it is that distance the picture is made of.
I set the camera low, against the first boulder, so the foreground stones keep their weight and the eye has something to climb over before it reaches the wall. From there the cliff does the work alone, stepping back headland by headland until it stops being a shape and becomes a suggestion in the haze.
Two walkers stand far off at the waterline, almost lost. They are the entire scale of the image. Without them the wall could be four metres or four hundred; with them it is exactly what it is, and the photograph stops being a texture and becomes a place where a person can be small.
What I remember is the sound — the shingle grinding under each retreating wave, a slow breath that never quite finishes. I waited for a bright patch to open in the cloud and lay a band of light along the cliff top, and once it had passed I stopped working. The scene had said what it came to say.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
