From 1976, Joel photographed the view from his house on Cape Cod Bay, in Provincetown: the same stretch of water and sky, at all hours of the day, from first light to dusk and beyond. The point of view barely changed. What changed was the tide, the weather and the light.
He used the horizon line, and sometimes its disappearance, to build fields of colour. Sixteen years of these pictures became “Bay/Sky” (1993), with a foreword by Norman Mailer, who also lived in Provincetown: “as if it is in the flux itself, and nowhere else, that we can find our few absolute statements of existence.”
“The Cape was fairly spare,” Joel said, “a couple of sand bars, some sand dunes, water and sky, and empty old houses.” And: “the harder I looked the more I began to see.”
Works: Bay / Sky, Dawn, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1986 · Bay / Sky Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1984 · Bay / Sky, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1985 · Bay/Sky, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1984 · Bay / Sky, Late Afternoon, Lifting Storm, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1993 · Dairy Land, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1976 · Cape Light, Peaches, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1983 · Doorway to the sea, 1982 · Cape Cod Roses, 1983 · Boy with a Bluefish, 1980.
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