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Into the Night: The Penlee Lifeboat Disaster

Marking 40 years since the Penlee Lifeboat tragedy, when 8 crew of lifeboat Solomon Browne were lost attempting to rescue the crew and passengers onboard a stricken coaster off the Cornish Atlantic coast, longterm collaborators Original Online created a unique live, online performance that is now streaming, to remember the crew’s courage, dedication and heroism.

My commission was to capture a group shot of the cast, together with solo portraits. The piece is a hopeful and stirring account of tragedy that celebrates heroism, but given the proximity to real-world events, with actors playing people whose lives were lost, I wanted to shoot images that had some of the sincerity of documentary portraits.

Leaning on Jack Lowe’s beautiful The LifeBoat Project – in which he shoots present-day crews with a plate glass collodion wet plate camera to lend modern images an unearthly timelessness – I designed a ‘slow photography’ approach, that used a canvas sail-like backdrop from Hapaca, lighting to hint at early dawn, and the Phase One IQ4 150MP set up with top-down viewfinder and a shutter release cable.

We asked the actors not to perform or model so much as to ‘be’, then I waited and shot as few as 10-12 images for each person.

It’s many more than the 1 shot you’d take on a plate camera, but as a process it created shots that – individually and as a set – are distinct from normal press portraits. With a very careful edit to enhance the super-shallow depth of field and texture captured in camera, the set was complete.

Into the Night - The Story of the Penlee Lifeboat Disaster for Original Online

Susan Penhaligon

Into the Night

Into the Night

Into the Night

Robert Duncan in Into the Night -The Story of the Penlee Lifeboat Disaster for Original Theatre Company

Into the Night

Into the Night

Into the Night

Tim Treloar

Into the Night

Into the Night

Into the Night

Madeleine Knight

Into the Night

Into the Night

Into the Night

Robert Findlay

Into the Night

Into the Night

Into the Night

Hubert Burton

Into the Night

Into the Night

Into the Night

Tom Chambers

Into the Night

Into the Night

Into the Night

Robert Mountford

Into the Night

Into the Night

Into the Night

Hazel Simmons

Into the Night

Into the Night

Into the Night

Into the Night -The Story of the Penlee Lifeboat Disaster for Original Theatre Company

Into the Night

Into the Night -The Story of the Penlee Lifeboat Disaster for Original Theatre Company