A late-season visit to Guernsey in 2005 yielded these images. The island, not formally part of Great Britain, has its own currency, language and feeling. Located not too far off the French coast in the channel (La Manche - The Sleeve), it has a southerly feel and is dominated by sandy beaches, rock formations, WW II bunkers, and holiday homes.

But it is the sky that got me most. There was no end to it. It stretched like the sand in front of you forever into a blue that was hard to catch, and sometimes felt more real in black and white than in colour. The bays and sandy stretches of coastline felt like appendices to the sky itself, which hardly ever seemed to be just blue. There is wind, as everywhere on the coast, and the clouds are being swept in an ever-changing ballet across the horizon.

Guernsey is better off-season. There are not enough empty spots on the small island for all the tourists that in normal years descend on the place, and much of the charm disappears in the busy summers. When autumn approaches, only the pensioners from the mainland or Britain remain, and the coastline suddenly comes back into its own.

The photographs were taken on 35 mm colour slide and black and white film. The inspiration to construct them as triptychs and diptychs stems from Nadav Kandar’s “Dark Line - The Thames Estuary” series. Organizing the images in these forms gives them back the feeling of endlessness that one experiences in reality - the sky merging with the ocean, with the beaches.

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About GUERNSEY SKY