Barbara Bosworth: The Sea

Far from the vibrant urban worlds where I’ve often photographed, I followed the subtle movements of time and tide, wind and water. Meanwhile, Rebecca photographed the waves of light as they washed through our house of many windows—and wrote spare text pieces to try to emotionally navigate this unsettling time, when so many we know have been caught in its undertow.

– Alex Webb (May 2021)

Inspired by Virginia Woolf ’s novel The Waves, this collaborative project brings together the work of creative partners Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb. The intimate collection serves as a pandemic logbook in words and images, created while the couple was largely sequestered on Cape Cod from March 2020 through May 2021. Rebecca provides original, hand-written poetry that punctuates her lyrical photographs and Alex’s panoramic seascapes. Their images serve as poignant meditations on what it means to be both deeply connected to the world around us and profoundly isolated from much that we hold dear.

Learn more about the accompanying limited edition HERE.

Each of her hour-long exposures transport me to the time and place when I saw that hot white streak burn across the sky, or admired the filtered light of the moon through silhouetted forest, or felt a crushing smallness while gazing at some far away galaxy.

— Julia Bennett, Lenscratch

Made over the past several years with an 8 × 10-inch field camera, Barbara Bosworth’s photographs of stars are hour-long exposures with the camera mounted on a clock drive. Her sun and moon images are made with a telescope attached to her camera. 

Speaking of her inspiration for these images, Bosworth writes: “Every clear night of the summer my father would go out for a walk to look at the night sky. Many nights I would join him. We knew the North Star, and the Big Bear, but the rest became our own. At times we stood still for an hour or more to watch for shooting stars. We had no agenda. It was all about amazement at a sky full of stars. With this sense of wonder, I began making photographs of the Heavens. In these days of the Hubble Telescope and its spectacular imagery from deep space, I wanted a reminder of the mystery of our own night sky.” 

The book also includes facsimile editions of three artist’s books that Bosworth has made as a nod to Galileo’s seventeenth-century publications in which he first observed the skies through a telescope.

Limited edition of this book available is sold out.

”Our explorations were slow and quiet meanders, as my father proclaimed the joys of looking at the natural world we passed through. On these walks I learned to love being in nature.” 

— Barbara Bosworth 

Photographs by Barbara Bosworth

Hardcover with tip-inn image
11.5 x 14.25 inches
120 pages / 33 duotone and 15 color images
ISBN: 9781934435601

“This beautifully produced book, which examines a small plot of meadow, is a real gem. From misty autumnal landscapes to spring flowers, all seasons are celebrated. These images are supplemented with a fine text, assorted inventories and thorough appendixes of things like what birds were spotted with their dates. It is very re-assuring that one small plot can be so lovingly explored and it is the thoroughness of this that makes this book so compelling."

—Martin Parr, TIME Magazine

Photography by Barbara Bosworth
Poetry by Margot Anne Kelley

Hardcover with jacket

10.25 x 12.75 Inches

200 pages / 60 images

Text on short trim inserts
Booklet in back pocket

ISBN: 9781934435960 — $55

This item is out of print.