Thames Log is a lyrical photo-documentary book by photographer and film-maker Chloe Dewe Mathews that explores our ever-changing relationship to water. Like much of Dewe Mathews’ work, the publisher (Loose Joints) says, ‘Thames Log pits documentary photography’s tendency to categorise and classify against the mystery and poetry of daily life.’
The book is the result of five years travelling up and down the River Thames, from its tiny source to its great estuarial mouth, to document people whose lives that overlap with the river but whose activities often go unnoticed, from hobbyist like ship-spotters and mudlarks to neopagan ritualists, eccentric coracle builders and the custodians of royal swans. The river flows through ceremonies and practices from boat burning in Oxford to evening prayer in Southend, from mass baptisms to teenage rites of passage.
Thames Log is organized geographically across rolling, French-folded pages, recording not only events across the spectrum of significance but also the exact GPS coordinates, dates, tides, and weather of each.
