​Listening to Jim Elston talk about ‘The Edge’ - his exhibition of Isle of Wight coast photographs at The Art of Wonder in Ryde, I noticed two words kept cropping up: “typically British”. 

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People coming into the gallery have identified the places in the photos with complete certainty. Almost all have been completely wrong. These are all scenes from around the Island’s shores, unique scenes each with a very personal and often poignant story attached yet they are all, somehow “typically British”.    The scenery is different, but the feel is familiar.  The Shanklin seaside shelter, more than 200 years old now, is a prototype for the shelters that dot the promenades and esplanades all around our coastline.  A mother and daughter pass by it, preoccupied and oblivious of the photographer waiting patiently to capture the moment of their passing.  They are oblivious too of all the comings and goings, of the countless personal seaside stories, that ornate seat has witnessed over its two centuries. Figures unidentifiable through the murk of the shelter windows, they are unaware of their starring role in ‘The Edge – where land meets sea’. 

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If Jim Elston had consciously taken “typically British” as his theme, perhaps he wouldn’t have waited at 5:30 am for the perfect shot of a mysterious mist-laden Wootton Creek, or focused in on the outline of refinery stacks, jagging up into the sky like a pack of (Player’s?) cigarettes with one glowing white cherry against a red sunset, a lone man on a pebble beach gazing, perhaps wistfully, out towards a passing cruise liner, or a tent pitched long-term under a pier.  All these could only have been taken here, yet ‘here’ could be on any stretch of British coast.

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The Edge is a series of personal moments in time caught on camera by a photographer narrator with a story to tell that is often at odds with the apparent subject.  My eyes rolled upwards when I spotted a row of bright coloured beach huts at the head of a line of otherwise brooding, gritty and, for want of a better word, edgy shots.  But “Look”, said Jim “They are photographed from the back”.  I look more closely.  They are not in the usual cheerful washing-line formation, but at an angle that leads the eye straight into a thicket of trees, dark grey shadows between the huts marching too in rigid formation, the perfectly painted planking desperate in its perfection.  The typically British seaside idyll these beach huts represent is an exclusive one, well padlocked, vastly expensive and, says Jim, “quite sad”.  The theme of ownership, of claims staked and protectionism, recurs in this exhibition.  A gorgeous rocky strandline invites us to paddle off into the distance, but our way is blocked by a large notice “private property, keep out”, a transit van in a garden rusts quietly into the ground, but is still savagely protected by coils of barbed wire. It has been there for ten years or more – “ten years of a life”, says Jim. Southern Water’s chunky sewage pipeline is pictured in one jolly black, white, red, green, orange and sky blue photograph in this series, my particular favourite for its industrial appeal.  This pipeline formed an imposing gateway to Ryde beach for many months.  Southern Water has laid its own claim on the Solent, forcing two Olympic teams who used to train in its waters to move out of Portsmouth because of the pollution it has caused, Jim tells me. 

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Technique and layout reinforce meaning.  Positive is never quite clear cut and is always followed by a negative.  Jim Elston’s monochrome sunset scatters the sky with an infinity of tones; here there is every shade of grey.   Along the sharp serrated line of a groyne reaching out into the Channel between Shanklin and Sandown, perching seabirds, barely discernible, hide in the shadows.  In the oil refinery sunset, Jim explores how reds affect a black and white photograph.  In many of these photographs, colour transitions into monochrome, echoing perhaps Jim’s preoccupation with the transition of all things over time – nature affects matter but it is always there.  In a hundred year’s time, the van will have rusted into the ground, but the matter remains.  

Rosemary Lawrey, Curator, The Art of Wonder.