RNLI exhibition celebrates lifeboats and their crews
LIFEBOATS and lifeboat crews are a popular subject for a number of photographers and maritime-related competitions, and a new exhibition sponsored by the RNLI celebrates this at the Poole Museum in Dorset. ‘Calm Before the Storm: The Art of Photographing Lifeboats’ encompasses everything from the lifeboat builders of the early 20th century to the faces of the volunteers who crew today’s high-tech lifeboats. Although the images span nearly 100 years, they have all been taken on glass plates. Two floors of the museum are for the exhibition, with the first-floor gallery revealing never-before-seen images taken from the historic archive of the Beken family in Cowes, who have been photographing boats and lifeboats on the waters surrounding the Isle of Wight since the turn of the last century.
The second-floor gallery of the Poole museum is given over to a contemporary glass-plate project called The Lifeboat Station Project. This eight-year mission, which is the brainchild of photographer Jack Lowe, began in January 2015. Jack is visiting all 238 RNLI lifeboat stations in the UK and Republic of Ireland to photograph them and the volunteers based there using the wet-plate collodion process. This exhibition is the biggest showing of his work so far and also includes the first showing for a new artwork entitled ‘Lifeboat Slipways 2015-2018’. For this Jack has created a ‘gridded tableau’ of nine all-weather lifeboat slipways from around the coastline of the UK.
‘Calm Before the Storm: The Art of Photographing Lifeboats’ will be at Poole Museum from 26 January-22 April 2019. Entry is free (www.poolemuseum.org.uk).
Look out for our feature on Jack Lowe in AP 2 March.