Parrish Dobson

Sometimes we don't know where we are (in our lives) until we are in between. This interval between locations can give heightened clarity about where we have come from and where we are going.

Most of these photographs were made over the many years that I have ridden the small ferry between the town of Rockland, Maine (on the rugged Northeast coast of the United States) and tiny North Haven Island, twelve miles out to sea. To the north, glimpses of the Blue Hills and closer, the Camden Hills. To the south, only the Atlantic Ocean with a few small outer islands sometimes in view.

The ferry ride is about an hour, and for that hour, all of us on board are in between: not here, not there. The light changes constantly, as do the colors. Temperature, weather, wind, waves, time of day, seasons – all are in flux. Not one passage across the bay is the same. And there is this too: in the middle of a bay with just a horizon, or a glistening wake, or a fog softening edges between ocean and sky, we can feel a little closer to the mystery of all of it.