Salt Pond Bay
David Little
Water Island Series, St Thomas, USVI 1983.
The 5 photographs from this large edition (upwards of a thousand negatives) were taken on Water Island off St. Thomas, USVI, in the summer of 1983. I stayed at my parent’s home in Sprat Bay, alone for three weeks, doing artwork in various media. Water Island is a lovely island that is 5 minutes by motorboat from the waterfront in Charlotte Amalie.
I was also taking photographs of “objets trouves”, flotsam and jetsam picked up on neighboring beaches. Anything and everything, familiar or unknown, man-made or natural, interested me; the interplay of overlapping shapes, textures, and colors, and the variety of materials. One beach in particular, Limestone, had thousands of small, white, sun-bleached coral pieces.
The compositions were arranged playfully, solving puzzle-like challenges. As with Surrealism, creating a new reality/mystery through their interaction and juxtaposition. I may well have been channeling Joseph Cornell and Georgio de Chirico. I shot these photographs with an OM-1 35mm camera, a macro lens, and a tripod. All of the works in this edition are untitled except as a series with a file # from the negative for direct reference
David Little’s work is currently on display in our Freeport, Maine Showroom. The show, My Other Place: Maine Artists Exploring the World, runs from March 6, 2025 – June 1, 2025.
