The idea for “Rising Seas” began niggling at me in early 2019 as I tramped along the Rhode Island coast and began noticing what seemed to be more dramatic shifts to shorelines I’ve walked along for more than 35 years. The skeletons of Tupelo trees at Jacob’s Point, which Elizabeth Rush writes about so poetically in her book Rising, Dispatches from the New American Shore, were a case in point. Marsh restoration efforts by the Warren Land Conservation Trust had placed a spotlight on their silhouettes that rose in stark contrast to the western sky and water. After the invasive phragmites disappeared, there was no missing them.

Later, an acquaintance with considerably more knowledge about coastal erosion than I walked with me along the shore at Mount Hope Farm in Bristol. She pointed out the burrows made by an expanding population of marsh crabs that eat the roots of marsh grass and other vegetation that hold the soil. Larger blue crabs usually control marsh crabs but overfishing of blue crabs has opened the door to the erosion of marshes in many areas in the Northeast.

Camera in-hand, I kept walking the shore, but soon realized the challenge of trying to use photography to depict something that surely had begun but was often so subtle as to be almost impossible to capture. Although my art is usually photo-based, sea level rise was going to require not only learning a lot more about the science of tidal inundation, but also an artistic interpretation that included photography in a less literal and more futuristic and imaginative way.

The images I created are a compilation of maps, scientific renderings of projected inundations, photographs I took of the Bristol County shoreline and an artist’s imaginings and ideas about how to visually communicate the concept of projected sea level rise and expected 100-year storm flooding in Bristol County. My hope is that they raise people’s awareness and spur dialogue as we envision a future in a vastly different littoral zone.

Skeletons of Tupelos at Jacob’s Point in Warren