TITLE: Old Moon

Old Moon is a series of black-and-white photographs exploring locations along the Cornish coastline associated with 18th-century smuggling
The work prioritises atmosphere over description, presenting these landscapes as places where memory, folklore and history appear to persist through time. Sites with evocative names such as Prussia Cove, Pepper Cove and Frenchman's Creek are approached not only as physical locations, but as psychological spaces shaped by narrative, association and imagination.
Made on analogue medium-format film with a restrained, warm tonal rendering, the images create a sense of temporal ambiguity, resisting a straightforward documentary reading. Instead, they evoke duration and continuity within the landscape.
Old Moon considers how these coastal environments can hold traces of past activity, not as fixed histories, but as fragments of cultural memory. Winter mizzle, low light and reduced visibility obscure detail, allowing form, tone and texture to suggest rather than define. The resulting images occupy a space between observation and interpretation.
The title, Old Moon, refers to the conditions under which smuggling took place, while also evoking cycles of time, stillness and shadow. Through atmosphere, ambiguity and imaginative engagement, the series presents the landscape as a place where what is seen remains inseparable from what is remembered or imagined.

AUTHOR: Clare Rodbourne (United Kingdom)

Clare Rodbourne works with black and white analogue photography to explore atmosphere and memory within historical environments.