Body Rock Sandis the fruition of an idea generated in Ian Jacob’s mind over fifty years ago by the gift of a book of photographs by French master Lucien Clergue, Née de la Vague (Born of the Waves). In its pages, Ian discovered a lasting inspiration – the interplay of skin, sea and sand in its evocative black and white images captured his imagination and never truly faded. Returning to his native Pembrokeshire in 2010 provided Ian with an ideal canvas with which to develop a new multimedia portfolio of work over the course of six years and achieve his own creative vision. The final photographs are moments in time which capture the ever-shifting nature of the shore, its fleeting patterns and textures, exploring contrasts between the solidity of rock and the suppleness of the female form, the sensuous relationship between it and the sea, and, at their most experimental, creating new forms through the synthesis of a model with the surrounding landscape and natural features. They are the results of a process of care and craft, patience and perseverance, of battling tide, time and conditions to achieve the extraordinary.

Ian Jacob