The Bookshelf - #6 - The Perimeter: A Photographic Journey around the Coast of Britain.
The Perimeter: A Photographic Journey around the Coast of Britain.
Quitin Lake
Publisher: Hutchinson Heinemann
Available on Amazon from £27.07
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If you have read any other posts from my Bookshelf series, you will know that I got a few photobooks for my birthday, and this is another one of them. This is one that I hadn’t heard of and this is one of the reasons I decided to buy it, so I wasn’t being pigeon-holed into the usual books that people go for when they’re making these kinds of purchases.
Not only had I not heard of the book, but (on reflection, perhaps rather embarrassingly), I hadn’t heard of the photographer either. Quintin Lake is an award winning photgraphers with a host of awards and a fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and also of the Royal Society of the Arts. For those of you from outside the UK, this is a big deal!
The Perimeter is a beautifully presented and bound hardback book, which represents excellent value for money, especially at the current Amazon price.
This book is truly a labour of love by the author, combining his loves of photography and hiking. Written and photographed (and walked!) over the course of 454 days across 5 years and totalling 11,000km around Britain’s mainland coast, a lot of effort has gone into capturing this.
Separated by regions and then sub divided into counties, this is not just a book of coastal photography, but an almost documentary like collection of images which show the coast and the surrounding areas, and in some cases the people that Lake has encountered on the way.
Expect to find dramatic coastal shots, points of interest, shots of grand and not so grand architecture, decay and flourishing beauty, all done in a way that can only be provided by the British coastal landscape.
You will explore how the coast has shaped the lives of the people who live there, and in some cases, how the people who live and work there have shaped the life of the coast. It’s taught me things I didn’t know about my own locality, the area that I work and has given me some ideas of things that I would like to get out and shoot as the summer draws ever closer.
I might even take the tent out and going do a longer walk.
This book was shortlisted for the 2025 Wainwright Prize and it’s easy to see why. It’s a great collection of images as well as both the stories behind the subjects of the photographs, wrapped up in the story of how the project unfolded with each step that the author took.
Another one for the bookshelf that demands to have some time spent with it in order that your read it and don’t just look at it.
Check out more of The Bookshelf by clicking the links below.
