End frame: First in the Series of ‘Oracles’ by David Parker

Michael Marten

I started taking photographs as a teenager and have been involved with photography ever since, from a first job as a caption writer at the Camera Press photo agency to starting the Science Photo Library in 1979. Since 2003 I have concentrated on my own landscape photography. My first major series was 'Sea Change' (2003-12), a study of identical views at low and high tide around the coast of Britain. A second project, 'Godrevy', was exhibited and published in 2015.

michaelmarten.com

I love this photograph because it is so mysterious. What is happening? Is it real? Is the water falling or rising, magically suspended or turned to ice?

In the middle of a bare moor, under a blank sky, something elemental, primaeval, potentially menacing seems to be emerging from the earth’s depths. From the world’s navel.