Limehouse Reach by Richard Bram

I’ve always said I would much rather sit and contemplate a landscape than try to photograph it. But in 2016 we returned to London after 8 years in New York. Our home looks over Limehouse Reach, a historic part of the River Thames where the river makes a great loop to the south. Growing up as I did in the dry American West, living on a great river is magical. The view is wide and ever-changing. The tide goes up and down 7 metres every day under a vast sky. I see the sun rising through the same morning mists that Turner saw and it inspires me; I see the old warehouses on the other side of the river through a dark winter fog just after sunset like a Whistler Nocturne and this inspires me too. Boats disappear into thick air in a white glow. Turner and Whistler both sketched and painted within 100 meters of where I live and I see the same phenomena. I'm not a landscape photographer, I said, but I am a photographer and there it is before me. What can I do but make photographs?