C-type photograph (diptych). In Jem Southam's photographic diptych the mouth of the river Clevedon is shown at low tide at left, and at high tide at right. Southam is interested in the continually shifting flux of the natural world, and few places change as rapidly over short periods of time as tidal landscapes. The coastline is a constantly moving boundary between land and sea: at times the river's power overwhelms the retreating sea and, at others, the sea swells to inundate the river channel. The cold stillness of the photographs, taken from the top of a hill, disguises the imperceptible change that occurs in the landscape as time passes.
