Mike Goldwater: ‘There’s a lot of spirit and a lot of beauty’
Photojournalist Mike Goldwater on turning his lens on home in his new book Island
Work has taken photojournalist Mike Goldwater across the globe. He has documented war, famine, natural disasters and social issues in central Asia, Brazil and Africa for organisations such as Christian Aid, Tree Aid and Save the Children, and as the founding member for the Network Photographers agency.
In his latest book, Island, the accoladed Ramsgate resident, who has been awarded by World Press Photo, focused his lens on subjects closer to home, in the Isle of Thanet.
“My wife is from here”, he explains. “We got married in Canterbury and had the reception in Minnis Bay. I’ve done a lot of work in other countries, but I’ve never done a project on a geographical area, a personal project.
“And it was a challenge,” he adds. “I quite like a challenge. And once you start doing it, you think, well okay, now I’ve got this far.”
The self-published book is bookended with poetry by fellow Ramsgate resident Sarah Tait and is a portrait of Thanet, made up of 129 black and white photographs taken over four years, from 2019 to 2023.
Despite the rigamarole of finding a printer that would produce small runs to the desired quality, bypassing art publishers was important for Mike. He wanted Island to be as affordable as possible, and not a “coffee table book for the wealthy”.
“This is about the Isle of Thanet, this little corner of Kent. And for the people of Thanet, I wanted this to be a contribution to its culture,” he says.
Island is also Mike’s “own journey” of delving into Thanet and to find out what lies beneath the surface of our coastal community. “You need to get under the skin of something in order to get images that reveal something,” he says. “And that’s what I was trying to do.”
The slice-of-life photos capture Thanet in all its beauty, idiosyncrasy, diversity and disadvantage. Naturally, the North Sea features heavily, as a part of life and a force of nature. Peppered between iterations and interactions with the sea, are images of what life looks like here; a covid-era socially-distanced life drawing class, farmers working the land, holidaymakers in their caravans, backstage at a pantomime, an Elvis impersonator at the Winter Gardens, Ramsgate Carnival pageantry, disappointed grommet surfers at the British Freestyle Championships on a windless day, and residents in their day-to-day, for example.
“I had a list of things I wanted to cover,” Mike explains. “I wanted to do something about the marina, about sailing, fishing, various things to do with the coastline. I also wanted to do something on Newington, and the high street. I wanted to get beyond the superficial and tell a true story about this place.”
It would be difficult, if not impossible, to capture the “truth” of Thanet without acknowledging the deprivation that exists here. While we are never far away from the sea in Island, we are equally as close to the disadvantage many people experience here, which is documented with a hefty dose of grace.
“Everybody deserves respect,” Mike says. “That’s the critical thing, not to be judgemental wherever possible. Everybody deserves dignified representation.
“I don’t think [Island] is a sanitised version of Thanet,” he adds. “That’s not what I was trying to do at all. Parts of Thanet are grotty, and it’s not about trying to highlight that and saying it’s a dump, because it’s not. There’s a lot of spirit and a lot of beauty and a lot of spirited people trying to do a lot of things.”
Thanet’s beauty queens run through the book almost as a motif of Thanet life. “They’re kind of anachronistic and it's quite seaside,” Mike says. “And for the people who are in those roles, it’s obviously a blast and a thrill, and you can see that. There’s a sense it’s some kind of step on some kind of ladder of life, that they have somehow been chosen in some way. And then the question is how do you represent that in a way that’s not just a kind of group snap?”
Mike explains he conceived Island as a black and white project from early on. “There’s a certain timelessness about black and white, and it’s more about mood and atmosphere while colour can be distracting.
“If you’re looking for compositions or situations where you’re trying to tell a story and someone’s wearing a red cap, your eyes go straight to the red cap. It doesn’t look at the expressions on people’s faces,” he offers as an example.
He adds that if he chose to use colour, Island would become “a book of the seasons”. The book is “not seasonal,” he goes on. "It’s more emotional in a way, and I think that is how I put it together.”
Mike selected the 129 photos from around 250, with shots being a mix of spontaneous snaps and those that required access, some of which the Salvation Army helped to facilitate. Other images are the result of fortuitous meetings. Throughout the four years, Mike would frequently carry his camera with him, just in case an opportunity cropped up.
“You have to have your antennae working or you don’t get anything,” he says, “and that serves you in good stead.”
He recalls how he spotted Travellers pony trotting and followed them “all day”, saying: “I've never seen it since, but that particular year they came through Ramsgate, Broadstairs, Margate and [the photograph in the book] is up at Westgate. So we went ahead and followed them coming across the long esplanade between Margate and Westgate.
“The vans were all there and they were packing their horses up and [the photo] was taken at the very, very end. I probably shot 500 pictures on that event.
“As a photographer you have to predict the future; you have to think ahead,” he continues. “Where is the picture going to be, how is the event you are watching going to evolve so you can put yourself in the right place when it comes together. You’re always predicting.”
After four years of studying his own corners of the world, does Mike see Thanet differently now? “Yes. Definitely. It’s fascinating to know more about where you are. It’s quite easy to just cruise through a place without having a better understanding of it. [Your knowledge] is never complete, but the more you know about a place, the more you know about the people, the more you feel for it, I think.
“There are a lot of challenges here, but there’s a lot of community spirit, and a lot of people working their socks off to make a difference, in ways large and small, and that deserves a lot of respect.”
He adds that creating Island has been a “lovely journey”, saying: “I’ve really enjoyed the whole experience of engaging with Thanet. It’s had quite a profound effect upon me as a person; a kind of humility about how many wonderful people there are.”
Island, The Isle of Thanet, Kent, by Mike Goldwater with poetry by Sarah Tait, is available at Margate Bookshop, and at mikegoldwater.com
