Tessa Bunney / photography / project

“A landscape that is essentially all space, measured out in different elements — the broad expanses of land, sea and sky. And within those -scapes, occasional pockets of densely packed treasure for those who know how to find them.

Estuarine views that are never twice the same; all aspects of them shifting not only across days but within them; sky, weather, cloud, light, tide, water, reflection, ripple, sand, channel. Even down to the variegated offerings from the sea, laid out on the shore, and taken back again. Offerings that are hidden, but there for the taking if you know not just where, but how to look.

We of course know the tale of what happens when you do not. When that knowledge is not etched into your brain from childhood and within your body through lineage. The tragedy of the trafficked Chinese cocklers who lost their lives in these waters attest to what may happen if you do not.

Alongside the tragedies are the many other challenges faced by the fishermen of this region, from weather and fish stocks to permits and Brexit.

As with rest of the natural world, the inference is resilience. Tessa documents here an industry potentially on the brink of extinction, but surmises it will continue, perhaps in some part-time, side-hustle form, at least partly pickled for posterity.

And I hope that is true, because what is lost when these ways of existing in the world are gone is not just the livelihoods and knowledge, but also the hidden losses: the community that exists on the sand, the words to describe things that will no longer need to be described, the culture passed down through generations as carefully as heirlooms.”

Helena Turgel

Taken from the review of the ‘Going to the Sand’ book on Caught by the River, 29 September 2023. You can read the full text here: https://www.caughtbytheriver.net/2023/09/going-to-the-sand-tessa-bunney-review/

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