Book of Wooden Boats

For 10 years, marine photographer Benjamin Mendlowitz, in collaboration with marine historian Maynard Bray, has celebrated the beauty of traditional wooden boats in the Calendar of Wooden Boats. Replaced annually, but too special to be discarded, the calendar is one of those memorable documents that encompasses an era, not a single year. Now 90 of the best images from the calendar are supplemented by more than 120 additional shots of the same boats in a stunning and permanent volume. Here are wooden sailboats, powerboats, working boats, open boats, and sailing yachts, the entire range presented in full color. What makes the work of Benjamin Mendlowitz so much different from that of other boating photographers? There are many answers, but a passion for the subject would have to be at the top of the list, followed closely by attention to detail, an understanding of the nature of light, the eye of an artist, technical mastery, and the ability to reveal the essence of a boat's soul. Careful study of the photographs in this book will reveal some or all of these elements. But to my mind not one is more representative of Mendlowitz's technical skill, artistic interpretation, aesthetics, and appreciation of the classical past than the photograph of the Nutshell pram and Downeast peapod on page 148. What a beautiful, elegant, eloquent portrait of two unpretentious small boats at peace by the edge of the sea! The photograph epitomizes the Benjamin Mendlowitz aesthetic. There is no time; it could be now, it could be then, it could be whenever the viewer wants it to be. Our boats, our coast, our scene. We are no longer looking at a photograph. We are looking into a scene; we are in a scene; it is our scene; we are there. That is what makes a photograph by Benjamin Mendlowitz different from all the others.