Photography – The Sea Zine
My brief was to tell a story through photography about how I connect with my surroundings or local environment. How do I create bonds with my family, friends, and colleagues? How do I nurture and develop these links to ensure they endure for years to come?
I decided to tell the story of my family and our strong connection to the sea – how it strengthens our family’s bond and the bond to our community. How that bond reaches through the generations to our ancestors.
I wrote my introduction to my ‘Zine to reflect this –
I met and fell in love with my husband and then he introduced me to where he lived: Newcastle, County Down. I then fell in love with the town, being so close to the mountains and the sea, an idyllic place to live.
My husband is the fourth generation of men in his family to be a member of the RNLI, he has over 20 years of service. His father has nearly 50 years of service and his Grandfather and Great Grandfather were also lifeboat men of Newcastle RNLI.
My Father-in-Law is also a fisherman, having fished all his life from an early age. He was retired due to ill health because of the fishing but still is obsessed with the sea, he still has a small fishing boat called Four Winds. As a family we go out on it as much as we can, the children just love the boat and the sea.
The sea has given so much to our family but also taken so much away. It has taken friends and family, some of them never found, some of them raised by my father-in-law and my husband. It has taken my fathers-in-law’s health and years of his life, especially when his own children were young, leaving his wife alone for months at a time.
Despite this our families connection to the sea is still so strong. My father-in-law can’t resistant the draw to the fishing, my husband never misses a RNLI training evening or emergency call out and they have passed this love and passion onto their children and Grandchildren, the next generation.