Undertones
Nan Young Carey, a fine art photographer, and writer Douglas Cutting have spent the last several years completing a collaborative body of work entitled Undertones. This beautiful coffee table book, published by Joggling Board Press, will be released this spring. The imagery and writing presented in Undertones illuminates the endless gifts available to us in the tidal estuaries, marshes and beaches of the Carolina coast. The idea is to draw viewers into a visual space, traveling more effectively into the salty currents while cherishing the literal and spiritual opportunities for cleansing and renewal. The narrative by Douglas Cutting leads the reader on a journey of personal experiences while inviting us to cue in on endless sensory triggers.
“Listen. It’s low tide. Oysters spit. A blue heron flushes. Pistol shrimp snap their claws, and the water crackles. A fish thumps a school of baitfish at the surface. That’s how the salt marsh speaks. It’s the soup of life moving around grass and pilings. Sounds you can almost smell.”
— Douglas Cutting
What People Are Saying
“This is a book soaked in salt,” said David Gessner, award winning author and writer of the foreword for Undertones. “The seasons move through the pages, storms blow through it, and the tides rise and fall. It is a world of movement where barnacles seethe, water pulses, shadows lengthen and nets are thrown. Your guides to this world see more than most of us. They look deeply, below the surface and the human grid, into the mystery. The images and sentences, made by the mother and son, work together to let us enter this older shadowed world. They slow us down and let us see the poetry of old docks, encrusted driftwood, and human artifacts sand-stained and primal.”
“I was captivated by the photographs.”
“Douglas Cutting is one of the best writers I have ever taught. I believe this book could become a classic.”
—Clyde Egerton
“Undertones is more than a compilation of words and photographs to be read and seen; it is a book to be experienced. In these pages, the southern coast becomes a landscape of inexhaustible wonder. A marvelous achievement.”
— Ron Rash