Annabel Manning - Swash Stills: Portraits 2021-2024

Annabel Manning’s " Swash" images materialized during COVID after daily experiences of the ebb and flow of sedimentary exchange on Sachuest Beach, as described by Walt Whitman on a different waterfront:

“Miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me” with

“Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten,

Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide.”

My own bodily presence is reflected as shadowy figures rippling on the thin layer of water and swash bubbles drifting over the sand. Along with the sediment, my reflections and shadows are sinking and swimming, unsettling and settling, fragile and firm.

The exchange, shadows, and bubbles are captured in photographs and then transformed into digital paintings—with sand as pixels, bodies as negative space, seaweed as lines.

Some “Swash” images can be viewed in seascape or portrait orientation as a continuation of the dialogue between human and natural figuration on the Sachuest shoreline.

And more from Whitman:

"As I wend to the shores I know not,As I list to the dirge, the voices of men and women wreck'd,

As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me,

As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer,I too but signify at the utmost a little wash'd-up drift,

A few sands and dead leaves to gather,

Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift."