Title: The Shipping Forecast
Publisher: Zelda Cheatle Press in association with Network Photographers
Publication Date: 1996
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
Signed: Signed by Author(s)
Edition: 1st
(79 unnumbered printed pages), 66 duotone photographs. Signed by author/photographer on half-title page. 25 x 29 cm. Original black cloth. Blue lettering on spine. Very slight bumping on front lower corner and at foot of spine. Original photographic dustwrapper with very slight creases at front lower corner and at foot of spine. Mark Power (1959-) is a British photographer, member of Magnum Photo and Professor of Photography at the University of Brighton. Power has been awarded the Terence Donovan Award and an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Photographic Society. He was inspired by a tea towel showing the coastal divisions, which he had bought in an RNLI charity shop in Great Yarmouth. "It did spark off certain pictures in my mind of these imaginary landscapes that I had built up in my head over all of these years." Between 1992 and 1996, he spent 4 years travelling around the coast, photographing all 31 areas covered by the Shipping Forecast broadcast on BBC Radio 4, using his own savings when his applications for grants were turned down. "If I'd actually sat down and thought about the logistics, I would never have started. But I guess, in the end, I just didn't, and I thought I would see how it went. He used a Volkswagen campervan as his mode of transport for the project, echoing the late Tony Ray-Jones, whose work has similarities in style and meaning to Power's. " A "book-of-the-week" recommendation in The Observer led to a first print run of 2,000 being snapped up "in about three weeks", Mr Power says, with two subsequent editions also selling out. "Ten thousand copies doesn't sound very much, but I'm not David Bailey - I wasn't anybody, in fact. As well as being published, it was also a touring exhibition across the UK and France. "I'm very proud that there's a serious photography book on the shelves of 9,500 people who wouldn't normally buy a book like that." But he admits many people did write to him, expressing disappointment that he had gone ahead with the project. "I suppose it was like making a movie of a book and realising the characters are not supposed to look like that.". Bookseller Inventory # 4327