----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Walkden" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Mike Johnston" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, January 12, 2003 10:16 AM Subject: Re: Photo Book Collecting
> The shipping forecast, for anybody who's curious, is a quirky little > British thing. Four times every day a weather forecast specifically aimed > at shipping is broadcast on national radio. It's read in a particularly > enigmatic, mysterious way. People like to listen to it in bed at night, and > it fires the imagination with the names of remote, unknown places with strange > names like South Utsira, Dogger and German Bight. It's part of our > national consciousness. Mark Power visited all the sea areas which > included at least a small area of land, and took photos there. It's a > great book. Mark Powers has really been making a name for himself in > UK photography over the last few years. > There is, and has been a similar thing on the Swedish Radio as long as I remember. What you say about the British broadcasts applies also to the Swedish ones. (Even the places you mentioned are included in the Swedish broadcast, sligthly different in the Swedish language, but both "Utsira" and "Dogger" are even spelled the same way.) I also seem to recall some photographer (or painter, or both) who decided to visit all these "mysterious" places and document them in a book. (I only read a few articles about that.). There really is something special about the narration - a long list of "strange" names followed by numbers indicating wind speed and wind directions. It becomes a mantra thing - and as long as these reports keep coming you know that the world is - at least in some respect - still out there... Lasse
