Liverpool (1): Antony Gormley - Another Place

Last week I went to Liverpool for a couple of days. My first visit was to Crosby Beach, to see the Antony Gormley installation, Another Place. It happened that the day I arrived was the day that Storm Ali (the first named serious storm of this season, bang on time for equinoctial gales) started to batter the north-west coast. I have never experienced such difficult conditions for taking photographs. At times the wind was so fierce that I had to hang on to the promenade railings to avoid being blown over. Holding the camera steady was a real struggle and I wasn't sure, until I got home and uploaded the photos to the computer, whether any of them were sharp shots. Sand was blowing everywhere and was stinging my face, getting into my ears and my clothes. The light was changing by the minute.

But it's a haunting place and a striking installation. The figures are more spread out than I had thought - commercially published photos have clearly been taken with a very long lens, producing a foreshortening effect and making the figures appear more bunched together than they are. They are spread over about 200 yards depth and two miles length of beach. The effect is not so much of a group of figures staring out to sea, but of many isolated individuals, each alone facing the sea.

And it's not a 'pretty' beach - the surroundings are industrial, the sand becomes mud further out, tides can be high and dangerous.

I managed some photographs . . . they could be a lot better, and you can see the swirling sand in some of them. Some are grainy because of the poor light conditions. I would like to go back: in gentler weather, when it would be safe to walk further out towards the water line, and pleasant to spend more time there; in better light for photography; with a tripod and a much longer lens . . .