Posts by Luke Whitaker

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Prior to 1900, Bosham had been a thriving commercial port for freight transport along Britain's coastline for over 300 years. The scene shows two trading ketches tied to Bosham Quay being unloaded by horse and cart at low tide. On the left, two mariners can be seen leaning against the oak piles of the Quay, chatting.

Bosham Sailing Club is the oldest sailing club in Chichester Harbour and was formed in 1907. It wasn’t until after World War I that other clubs were established within the harbour and since then, the harbour has mainly been used for recreational and competitive sailing. What was once a busy, working Quay for Bosham’s fishermen and mariners, with customs tolls payable to the Lord of The Manor of Bosham, has since been used to launch and keep sailing boats that are raced in the harbour, or tenders that are used to row out to the deep-sea moorings.

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Bosham used to have a millpond to even out the seasonal variations in the water level of the man-made Bosham stream, which fed the watermill on Bosham Quay until it closed in 1936. It was the oldest watermill in the area and had been in operation since at least the eleventh century, as it is mentioned in the Domesday Survey in 1080 as one of eight mills in the area. It was a very large millpond, with sluice gates to control the flow, and over the centuries it was stocked with fish and eel, which were regularly trapped for food.

The tide comes right into the village at Bosham. During a high spring tide, the sea covers the road at Street End, and rises up Bosham Lane and into the High Street. At the peak of the incoming tide, the village is entirely transformed as it looks as though Bosham stands on the borders of some great lake, with the old cottages along the High Street appearing to float on the water. The tide rises right up their front walls, shimmering and reflecting in the sea with countless subtle patterns and colours, and waves lapping under their windows.

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Bosham’s fishing industry enjoyed a boom in the second half of the nineteenth century. The arrival of the railways in 1846 allowed the fishermen to expand their markets, and Bosham’s boatbuilders began to build larger fishing boats that could be at sea longer, and hold larger cargoes of fish. Young oysters were dredged up in the shallow waters of the English Channel and off the French coast, and left to mature in nursery beds within Chichester Harbour. Scallops were dredged up in deeper waters (below 25 feet) of the English Channel, where herring, mullet, crab and bass could also be fished with ease. Mackerel, shrimp, and cockles were in plentiful supply in Chichester Harbour and Bosham’s fishing fleet sailed to Shoreham to fish for mussels, and to the North Sea for cod.

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At the end of the nineteenth century, Bosham's oyster fishery was booming, and there was a huge demand for oysters in London, where it is estimated that a staggering 144 million were sold each year. The oyster ponds were located along the foreshore of Bosham's two creeks, either side of the Quay. The oysters needed a great deal of care to protect them from growing over each other, and smothering the smaller ones, which caused suffocation, and the fishermen would continually walk or row out to the ponds to monitor their growth. They were constantly sorting and grading them, and removing mud and seaweed from the ponds, which could also suffocate them.

 

Bosham's oyster boats, pictured here, were built in the village. They were wide rowing boats with low sides to allow the fishermen to easily dredge and use a net. A cross between a fork and a rake was used to scoop the oysters out of the ponds, into buckets or bags. They were brought ashore and packed into baskets and taken by horse and cart to the railway station, one mile to the north. The majority of Bosham's oysters were sold in fish markets in Portsmouth, Southampton, Brighton, Winchester, Hove, Guildford and various boroughs of London.

 

As well as using these rowing boats to manage the oyster ponds, fishermen would have used them to fish for shrimp in shallow waters within Bosham's creeks.

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Perhaps the most interesting passage of Chichester Harbour's oyster history is the story of the fishery during the nineteenth century when we saw the emergence of oyster merchants such as James Duncan Foster in Emsworth and William Yetman in Bosham, who established an early form of factory farm fishing to take advantage of the arrival of the railways in 1846, which significantly expanded markets for local fishermen, and shortened delivery times dramatically. Their fishing fleets built much larger oyster boats that could stay at sea longer and carry larger cargoes of fish, and produced better quality oysters by using oyster ponds to manage their growth and allow the oysters to cleanse before they were sent to market. By the end of the nineteenth century, oysters had been elevated from a subsistence food for the lower classes to a prized delicacy of the upper classes. The story of Chichester Harbour's oysters through the centuries is fascinating...

Up at 5am on a still April morning to capture this moment of peace and tranquility in the Bosham Creek. I walked along Shore Road and sat on an old wooden jetty for an hour waiting for the light to strengthen. Bosham can feel a very spiritual place at first light, and a calmness came over me that I have never experienced before.

Artists use their signature and blind stamp to signify completion of the printing process and to show a mark of provenance, which allows collectors to trace the work back to the artist's studio. A blind stamp ('blind' meaning uncoloured) is often unobtrusive and you might have to inspect a print carefully to establish its presence.

What does it feel like to walk around Chichester Harbour on a freezing cold winter's morning? Despite the cold and damp, I find those still mornings are some of the best of the year. Every now and again the sun might break through the clouds for a fleeting moment or two, and the whole channel can look quite enchanting.

Over the years Charlie Waite has become famous for his iconic studies of avenues of trees, which satisfies his deep sense of order, and provides pleasure in repetition and the aesthetics of arcs and diagonals. In this article we read the story behind Lucca, Tuscany, Italy 1990 and hear how he finds the opportunity to photograph a corridor or cloister just as irresistable as an avenue of trees.

Charlie Waite tells the story behind one of his popular works from Cantabria, made during a book project on Spain in 1990, and shares the despair of waiting patiently through prolonged periods of rain, and the photographic ecstasy of capturing this very special image in a brief moment of flat lighting with no direct sunlight at all.

Charlie Waite's love affair with trees dates back 40 years and in this piece we hear from the artist about his relationship with a dear tree in the West Country that he has photographed for more than 25 years, and remains very close to his heart.

We are delighted to introduce a stunning new photograph by Charlie Waite titled Mere Study 4, Wiltshire, England 2021 which will feature in a forthcoming documentary 'My Greatest Shot', filmed by Sky Arts and expected to be published this autumn or early 2022.

Charlie Waite's colour photographs are archival pigment prints, signed and numbered with the artist's blind stamp. All prints are made personally by the artist in limited editions of 25 or 50 prints. Bespoke print sizes and frame mouldings are available for all photographs by request - please email sales@boshamgallery.com 

Michael Kenna’s prints have a distinguished provenance. Since the start of his career in the 1970s Michael Kenna has worked solely with film, and he makes every silver gelatin print himself personally, in his darkroom at his home studio in Seattle, USA.

Michael Kenna has travelled the world to create his distinct black and white images of unpopulated landscapes. It was in the mid-1980s that Kenna first began to visit Japan and became influenced by an Asian sense of aesthetics. In 2002 he started his love affair with the northern island of Hokkaido where his compositions became increasingly minimalistic and abstract, free from extraneous sensory information. In the following interview extract we hear the story behind his iconic photograph Tree Portrait, Study 1, Wakoto, Hokkaido, Japan 2002 which appeared as the cover of his Retrospective Two book, published by Nazraeli Press in 2004.

He is one of the most celebrated landscape photographers in the world and art critics have described Charlie Waite's instantly recognisable prints as 'rare perfections of light, colour and composition which offer the viewer a luxuriant portrait of a planet at peace and one where mankind and his activities are in harmony with his surroundings'. But did you know what a charming and eloquent writer Waite is too? Here we enjoy the story behind one of Waite's more unusual photographs within his archive, East of Gibraltar, Spain, 2017, and his clever use of a limited colour palette. 'I acquired an early edition for my own collection and have loved living with this stunning print in my hallway at home. I adore this sea blue!' Luke Whitaker.  BUY