Swell – A Year of Waves
A former Editor of Surfing magazine and an experienced surfer, Evan Slater has ridden many of the waves he writes about in this compelling photographic essay, which gives us a glimpse of the many and varied moods of ocean.
While the brief text is thoughtful, even educational in places, this is not a book that you read, so much as one you feel. The 155 photographs, taken all around the world, pull you into a world of tides, waves, ripples, breakers, peelers, peaks, surges and swells.
Indeed the language that we use to describe the ocean doing it thing is absolutely indicative of the drama that can unfold when wind, weather and water mix.
To tell the story, each chapter of Swell represents one of the Earth’s four hemispheres with the photos tracing the path of four different swells as they surge towards land. A bespoke map for each chapter helps give a useful overview for the armchair wave watcher.
When Slater suggests “Drop a pebble into a bathtub and watch the disturbance travel from one end to the other…” it’s not just a bit of banal bathtub science. It’s a reminder of the arbitrary nature of maps and international borders, especially when it comes to water.
A storm in New Zealand, for example, can create 20-foot daredevil waves in Tahiti and little head-high peelers in Alaska. The storm itself may have fizzled out within 12 days somewhere off the coast of South America, but it will have created echoes of itself in the water for up to 7000 miles away.
A beautiful, simple book to immerse yourself in, or to simply dip your toe into from time to time as a reminder of why this continuous body of water that covers 70% of the earth, deserves our respect and awe.
Swell – A Year of Waves
Evan Slater; Peter Taras (photographs)
Chronicle Books
Hardback
£18.99
- This review appeared in Geographical magazine circa May 2012.
