写真

St. Ives' harbour and Smeaton's Pier at half tide from Pednolva Walk, St Ives, Cornwall. St Ives in Cornish is Porth Ia, meaning Ia's cove.

This old fishing village has gone through many changes. The modern seaside resort developed as a result of the arrival of the St Ives Bay branch line, part of the Great Western Railway in 1877. With it came a new generation of Victorian seaside holidaymakers. Much of the resultant expanded town was built during the latter part of the 19th century. And of course St Ives is equally famous as an artistic centre. Attracted by the beauty of the place, and the legendary light, in 1928 the Cornish artist Alfred Wallis and Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood met at St Ives and laid the foundation for the artists' colony. In 1939, Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Naum Gabo settled in St Ives. In 1993, a branch of the Tate Gallery, the Tate St Ives, opened. The Tate looks after the Barbara Hepworth Museum and her sculpture garden (see my previous posting). When I was there in March the Tate was hosting a really interesting exhibition called "The Modern Lens: International Photography and the Tate Collection". The town has attracted artists from overseas, such as Piet Mondrian and Maurice Sumray, who moved from London in 1968, and continues to do so today with younger artists such as Michael Polat, who took up residence there from his native Germany in 1999. The potter Bernard Leach worked here until his death in 1972.

You can go from kiss-me-quick hats and fish-and-chip suppers to world-class art in a matter of a hundred yards. No wonder St Ives is world famous!

I often used to use a deep red filter with b/w film to make skies darkly dramatic, and sometimes also burnt them in at the darkroom printing stage. So now I try to replicate that effect in Photoshop...

Click here for the larger Beta TrekEarth version.