\n In recent years Stephen, who completed a BA in Fine Art at Norwich School of Art and Design, has been based in Lowestoft and spending a lot of time on the beach at Pakefield taking photographs which are now published in ‘broken boats cloaked figures’.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n The new book –\u00a0 broken boats cloaked figures (Image: Stephen Hyatt-Cross.)\n<\/p>\n
\n He writes: “Late summer. The day starts overcast and ends in sunlight. I walk along the seashore. There are small groups of children playing on the beach. Dog walkers, couples sitting in cars on the cliff top eating fish and chips. Runners, cyclists. The evening sunlight casts huge shadows across the beach.”\n<\/p>\n
\n broken boats cloaked figures (Image: Stephen Hyatt-Cross)\n<\/p>\n
\n Stephen says he walks without a plan, turning here and there on a whim, taking photographs as he goes with no specific or preconceived purpose… until.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Sunlight reveals the fabric of the world. On the beach, small cities of drift and debris. About twenty fishing boats and a similar number of winches, mostly derelict and abandoned. Until recently there were more,” he writes.\n<\/p>\n
\n “There were wooden boats with hulls that had rotted away. A fibreglass boat sawn partly in half, which had become a rubbish skip.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n broken boats cloaked figures (Image: Stephen Hyatt-Cross)\n<\/p>\n
\n broken boats cloaked figures (Image: Stephen Hyatt-Cros)\n<\/p>\n
\n “There were rusted winches that would never turn again. Splinters of. wood, nails and wire hawsers, all of it lying around in a slowly decaying muddle.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Now much of this clutter has been cleared away, and the beach tidied up by the local council,” says Stephen.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Of the boats that remain, only one is occasionally put to use. Launched from the beach and then hauled back, with the aid of a still functioning motorised winch, to its resting place above the high tide line.\n<\/p>\n
\n broken boats cloaked figures (Image: Stephen Hyatt-Cross)\n<\/p>\n
\n “No doubt\u00a0 all the boats on the beach were once in regular use, a source of income for men now grown old.\n<\/p>\n
\n “You see them occasionally, the old men, down among the boats, adjusting the tarpaulins, tightening cords, making good what the wind has worried loose.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Then trudging through the shingle towards a cliff-top cottage, backs turned toward the sea and the decaying equipment on the beach, away from a life that’s passed,” writes Stephen.\n<\/p>\n
\n Autumn. A high tide and strong winds on a Friday night. More of the cliffs have fallen. Caravans teeter on the edge. People evacuated. Parts of the beach washed away. Four wooden bungalows on the cliff edge demolished. What seemed safe and solid yesterday is today swept away.\n<\/p>\n
\n broken boats cloaked figures (Image: Stephen Hyatt-Cross)\n<\/p>\n
\n In his photographs we can imagine the boats and winches as substitutes for a human presence.\n<\/p>\n
\n Cloaked figures, facing out to sea, facing up to storms and floods. Small groups huddled together on the ground, hooded, and trussed – boats, winches, tarpaulins – visitants from the past. Ghosts.\n<\/p>\n
\n As Cameron Self writes in his Postscript: “East Suffolk Council’s recent decision to clear the beach has added greater poignancy to Stephen’s photography as he has, quite literally, been capturing a vanishing world.”\n<\/p>\n
\n broken boats, cloaked figures by Stephen Hyatt-Cross is published by Waterland Books. It costs \u00a312.99 and is on sale at\u00a0 Waterstones in Lowestoft and Southwold, the Book Hive, Norwich, and from www.waterlandbooks.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In recent years Stephen, who completed a BA in Fine Art at Norwich School of Art and Design,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":820036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-820035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}