The Bathers have been an on going point of interest with McCosker who has photographed along the beaches of San Diego County since the mid seventies. The portrait within a landscape was a tradition that early American painters utilized to depict a nature made to seem more friendly by the presence of man. This puritanical approach is no longer a necessity in this human dominated nature that we exist in now. The images of humankind in the habitat of the coast becomes for us, a portrait of a psychological reality, a pristine point of reflection on our state of balance with that which we once refereed to as nature.

Duncan McCosker
Coronado, California, 1977,
gelatin silver print
Courtesy of the Photographer
22"x28"

McCosker's peopled documents are transformed by his choice of location into portraits within a near dreamscape. The motion and light present there is in what he describes as a constant flux. The subjects who inhabit the beach are photographed as both in and out of harmony with the rich texture of their surroundings and in seeing them there, we begin to see ourselves.

Duncan McCosker
La Jolla Cove, California, 1978,
gelatin silver print
Courtesy of the Photographer
22"x28"