Views from Astronomer's Point

Mark Adams.  Selected photographs from ‘Cooks Sites’, a collaboration with historian Nicholas Thomas produced from journeys to the historically significant Dusky Bay, from 1995 to Adam’s most recent expedition in 2014.

“In the late nineteenth century Russell Duncan, photographer and Robert McNab, historian and parliamentarian, visited the Dusky Sound sites following the 1773 second voyage of James Cook. When I was twelve I was given a children’s book about Cook’s voyages to the Pacific, illustrated by Duncan’s photographs.  My photographs are ‘after’ the paintings and photographs of Cook’s artist William Hodges and Duncan. Their origin is a childhood dream prompted by the misrecognition of a Duncan photograph of blurry forms shrouding Totara stumps and Kidney Ferns that grew into monsters. I knew I had to go there”.

Mark Adams, 2014 from Nine Fathoms Passage 8,9