Twelve images from the “Overboard” portfolio by Richard Alan Cohen are on view at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, Massachusetts from June 11th to July 7th.
As I have searched for landscape imagery along boat hull waterlines, I have been struck by evidence of the record of water pollution. The waterline is sometimes interrupted by drains and scupper holes from which the outflow leaves traces of various corrosives, rust, and pollutants disgorged from within. The drain hole is the concentrated source of these pollutants that are diluted once they enter the sea. The color and forms introduced by the interaction of the pollutants with the boat’s bottom paint provide iconic symbols of man’s disturbance of nature, and are inescapable evidence of the downside of the sailor’s voyage upon the sea. – Richard Alan Cohen
