The last image (Image 6) speaks to some of those complications. Coasts and beaches change, and humans adapt and adjust. Sometimes they try to assert more control. They build sea walls, groins, and concrete storm drains, bolstered by rip rap (as pictured here), which attempt to stave off and direct the energies of natural and anthropogenic change. Such efforts can work…for a time. Like that solitary figure hidden on the right side of the frame (look closely at Image 6), such processes can make us feel small, surrounded, and overpowered. And yet, like that single human figure, and the others throughout these images, we humans swim, play, contemplate, push back, and adapt. We persist. Despite the immensity and inevitability of it all.
Maybe that’s what Harry Callahan was hinting at, all those years ago.