The Shipping Forecast, 2010
Laser Printing, 148.5x148.5mm

Intangible and mysterious, familiar yet obscure,
the Shipping Forecast is broadcast, in the United Kingdom,
four times a day on BBC Radio 4.
For those at, or about to put to sea, the forecast
may mean the difference between life and death.
But for millions of listeners it is more than this;
the language of the Shipping Forecast
has entered the public consciousness,
creating landscape of the imagination.

The Forecast divided the oceans of Western Europe into 31 sea areas.
In 1993 Mark Power set out to visit all of them,
from South-East Iceland in the north
to Trafalgar, off the coasts of Spain and Portugal.
It took him four years to complete his journey.

Power's photographs are a response to the clash
between the pictures built up in his imagination since childhood
and the reality of the places he found.

Photography
Mark Power

Design
Goo-Ryong Kang

(c)2010 Magnum Photos Inc.