Beach Wrack Gallery

This project has been the biggest, longest lasting, and most addictive of my photographic adventures. Many times I have tried to move on, wrap it up, find some closure, but then I will be on a beach and see a pattern, color combination, or oddity in the plants and animals that washed up and can’t resist taking at least a few shots, usually with my iPhone. I wrote this poem as an introduction to a public showing of this project. It captures some of what this project means to me.

Beach wrack is a term that describes the natural stuff that washes up on beaches world wide- kelp, sea grasses, dead birds and mammals. The stuff that many people see as a nuisance, eye-sore, nose-sore, and home to lots of flies. Lots of places remove this stuff to make the beaches more pleasant for beach goers. But of course, the beach wrack materials are part of the beach ecosystem and support life in many ways.

What initially hooked me on this project was the realization that Beach Wrack is often unbelievably beautiful. The colors, textures, patterns, and ever changing nature of the natural creations that move and mix and re-organize when lifted and stirred by the water. It is a bit uncomfortable sharing how mesmerizing, and all consuming, my observations of this process has been for me. I have spent countless hours watching the dance, the lift and fall, the pushing higher up and the pulling back down, the re-arrangement of the sculptural elements. Often my wife refused to go to the beach with me, unless I left all the cameras behind.