The Story behind Sonnets – Bare Stack, Ailsa Craig [2009]
Growing up on the Ayrshire Coast, the island of Ailsa Craig which rises abruptly 1,100 feet from the outer Firth of Clyde is one that I have long been familiar. Believed to be the core of a long extinct volcano, the island has a well-known history as being the source of the rare rock ‘Ailsite’ which has been extensively quarried for curling stones. The island has featured prominently on my physical as well as my mental horizons, and after acquiring a copy of the Reverend R. Lawson’s 1888 guide to the island, I resolved myself to make the journey across to make an image for my ‘Sonnets’ photographic series.
In 2009 after chartering a small boat from Girvan, my father, brother and my friend and assistant Henning made the short journey to Ailsa Craig. The island itself is a strange and desolate place, and after a few hours of exploring the ruined cottages and abandoned homes of the workers, Henning and I set off towards the North of the island to visit a location I was familiar with from the work of Charles Kirk, one of the first photographers to document the island and its birdlife in the early 1900s.
Having spent some time walking across the boulder strewn beaches and having passed the now silent Victorian foghorn, we reached the base of the Bare Stack, an enormous cliff face which loomed overhead. I quickly set up the shot while Henning changed into the white shirt and black braces, while the island’s resident seabird colony circled above, making a terrible noise which was almost deafening. Having only limited time on the island, the whole shoot was done in about 15 minutes, and having composed and made several images, we travelled back round the island to where the boat was waiting for us and made our way back across a choppy sea.
This image has long been one of my favourites from the series, and to date is probably the one that I have received the most correspondence about. It’s an important image for me, and helped make explicit the relationship between the figure and the sheer scale of the landscape. I was however not the first to create a ‘Sonnet’ for Ailsa Craig – that honour goes to John Keats who addressed the “craggy ocean pyramid” in a Sonnet on Ailsa Craig in 1818. I also doubt I will be the last – the island has inspired generations of artists and poets, Wordsworth and Burns amongst them, and will continue to do so long after I am gone.
July, 2011
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