'Circling off Ramsgate', photograph by Michael Wenyon and Susan Gamble, 2002

Panoramic photograph of bouy in sea of Ramsgate seen from a boat.

Purchased through the Cecil Beaton Royalties Fund

Wenyon & Gamble recorded this photograph on board the 'Sea Searcher', a wooden fishing boat based in Ramsgate, Kent, at 1:30pm on August 28, 2002. This image is part of a body of work in which they harnessed their camera to a moving structure, such as a telescope. For 'Circling off Ramsgate' they selected a boat to map out the picture. The original digital image was produced in a computer, from a sequence of still pictures recorded by a digital video ('DV') camera. The boat was turned in a circle near the buoy, which they had planned in advance. The entire sequence was recorded over a period of about one minute. The waves, wind and tide pushed and pulled the boat. It was also raining.

When Wenyon & Gamble were considering taking this photograph from a moving boat, they came across the copious online publication of the sketchbooks of William Turner by the Tate Gallery, with many drawings, some in panoramic format across two pages, of seascapes, ports and harbours on the Ramsgate coastline.

Michael Wenyon and Susan Gamble have established a photographic practice that explores the possibilities of new imaging technology. Circling off Ramsgate is from a series of panoramas made using a digital video camera harnessed to a moving structure. To create this photograph they filmed a buoy for about one minute as they circled it aboard Sea Searcher, a wooden fishing boat based in Ramsgate, Kent. They then spliced together a sequence of stills to make this multi-perspective image, which refers to the panoramic seascapes of the English painter William Turner (1789–1862).

E.212-2005