We are delighted that Tessa Bunney has given us permission to present a gallery of her Sunderland Point photographs on the website. The gallery is now live and can be viewed by following this link

This is a special addition to our collection. We are well represented in older photographs of historic interest and fascination and the splendid images taken by Alan Smith of more recent times, but with these we are able to add modern classics.

Tessa, a documentary photographer, is now well known to us after the highly successful showing of her exhibition ‘Going to the Sand’ in the Mission Church during the summer of 2023. The images in the exhibition illustrated the experience of fishing in Morecambe Bay and featured a number taken at Sunderland Point. Tessa was a frequent host in the Mission Church spending time with visitors answering questions about the photographs.

The book arising from ‘Going to the Sand’, recently published by Another Place Press, has already sold out.

Likewise, we are fortunate to have become well known to Tessa. She has returned to the Point and taken sets of photographs around James Walker. Firstly, when he was haafing and later, Tessa travelled with James on a fishing trip into the Bay shrimping. What would have been considered very bad luck in the old days – a woman in a fishing boat – has been the opposite, a thrilling success.

“It was shrimping that first brought me to Morecambe Bay back in 2018, that was tractor shrimping from Flookburgh but since then it’s been my ambition to experience shrimping by boat from the River Lune estuary. Thank you to James Walker for making that happen!

Early one November morning, we watched the sun coming up whilst waiting for the tide to drop before heading out on the boat along the River Lune estuary out onto Morecambe Bay.

The boat was once owned by Trevor Owen who also used it for whammelling on the River Lune for salmon until it was completely banned in 2018.

The beams with the nets attached are lowered into the sea and then the trawling begins, the caught shrimps are riddled at sea so the crabs, small fish and shrimps go back. Trawl, riddle, repeat. Usually boat shrimpers cook the shrimps in sea water on board the boat but that day James cooked the shrimps at home and I left him with a pile of shrimps on his kitchen table ready to be picked.”

There are some biographical notes in the introduction to the gallery, and much more information about Tessa and the wide range of her work can be found on her website, Facebook page and in her other social media – links have been provided.

As editor, I have allowed myself to choose my favourites photographs for this announcement.