King Wave is a series of five pieces, each piece in the series consists of a pair of digital images behind Plexiglas panels. The larger images are made from photographs of extremely large waves that I made at Margaret River in Western Australia. The term “king wave” refers to freak “killer” waves that appear without warning and that are many times bigger than the prevailing sea. The smaller images in each pair are based on photographs made in cemeteries in southern California. The parenthetical title of each piece is taken from a section of the cemetery as it appears on the concrete curbstones. Both of the images have been heavily manipulated. The original wave images were mirrored to create a wide format image, all obvious evidence of this doubling was removed as the image was rebuilt. Some small clues to underlying symmetry were left at the outer edges, and the surface quality of the image was altered to suggest the feel of an oil painting. In their finished forms it’s not clear whether these images are derived from the real world, or reproductions of oil paintings. The smaller images have also been subtly altered by the addition of unnaturally symmetrical elements (leaves in the gutter, joints in the concrete curbstones etc.), and artificial soft-focus. It’s is my intention to present these as un-trustworthy images.

King Wave brings together two conflicting approaches to the big issue, the last issue, death. On the one hand there is the urge to glamorize the subject, this lies at the heart of any understanding of the sublime. Mountaineers, divers and other adventurers cannot deny that risking death whilst surrounded by the overwhelming beauty of the natural world is an important part of their motivation. Whilst this may seem to be a particularly male point of view as far as mountaineering in concerned, the same cannot be said for diving, particularly free diving. Many of the world leaders in this most dangerous of sports are women, they personify the glamour of the sport in their physical beauty combined with the great risks that they take. A few days before I made the original wave photographs at Cape Naturaliste I was diving at the Ningaloo reef. While swimming with whale sharks and manta rays I pushed the limits of my own free diving abilities. Once below the surface the free diver finds herself in a floating world of incredible beauty, but there is also no doubt that she is also slowly dieing every second that she is down there. I experienced this myself, and it was still fresh in my mind as I photographed the waves.

In contrast to the sublime effect of the wave images, the second element in each of the King Wave pieces recognizes the shear banality of death. This aspect of each piece speaks to the point of view not so much of those who choose to risk death, but of those left behind by it. When I first came across the list of cemetery sections as they appear in the Thomas Guide (a street map of Los Angeles) they seemed to create a poem that was both funny and tragic, in that they so plainly fail in what they are trying to do: to come to terms with death in a way that makes it seem rational, reasonable even. As well as the glamour of risk King Wave is about all the ways that we try to deal with loss. Of course these attempts will always fail, there is no way to encapsulate death, regret and guilt in a way that lets us put them neatly away, but I found these romantic landscape descriptions stenciled on concrete curb stones poignant in their banality, and very sad.