James Sutherland
If you have ever browsed the Solarcan World Map, you might have spotted a Solarcan marker out in the Pacific Ocean and wondered how it got there.
We have James Sutherland to thank for that one.
James works as a navigator aboard ships, spending four months at a time at sea. It is a life of routine, repetition and long stretches of time that can be difficult to distinguish from one another. He wanted to find a way to express that feeling, and Solarcan gave him the means to do it.
“I work as a navigator on ships. For 4 months at a time my life is structured and routine. The days and weeks and months blur together. I had been thinking about the nature of time and wanting to find a way to express that feeling of repetition. The Solarcan provided a perfect medium to express that.”
Normally, a Solarcan stays firmly in one place while the Sun moves across the sky. James turned that idea on its head. His camera was aboard a travelling ship, with the motion of the vessel and the sea changing the shape of the Sun’s familiar arcs.
The result is a solargraph unlike the ones we usually see. The trails still have a clear overall direction, but they bend, shift and are interrupted by striking horizontal marks. Four months of life at sea appear together in a single image.
Those interruptions remind us of an electrocardiogram: the Sun beating across the image like the rhythm of a heart. There is something particularly fitting about that in a photograph inspired by the passing of days, weeks and months.
What we love about this project is that James did not just take Solarcan somewhere unusual. He used it to give a visual form to something personal: the strange way time can feel when life follows the same pattern, day after day.
For his imagination, his willingness to experiment and this extraordinary record of time spent at sea, we are delighted to recognise James Sutherland as a Solarcan Super User.
Congratulations, James! You have earned the coveted golden Solarcan Super User pin. It cannot be purchased — only earned.
