Dandy Vagabonds

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Aqui, onde a terra se acaba e o mar começa…

Photography by Claudine Boeglin

São Bernardino. Silver Coast. Moody dawn. Low tide.
The Atlantic Ocean, careless of voyeurs, has stripped its viscera.

A scene of Joseph Koudelka’s Chaos. Fractured rock formations, wave-carved figurines, bone-colored stones of the ocean floor—still wet and slippery as eels. Some stones bear ink-black scars; others are veined with ochre marble. A King Kong hand wearing a green-velvet glove here. An Aztec ancestor staring at us, perplex, there. Playful gulls or cormorants catwalk along the edge of the sea, an immaculate feather left behind.

When the ocean uncovers its stage, walk barefoot on its cathedral in ruins—mesmerized by its nuanced hues of grey, basalt, amber, seaweed-green, and silvers. Fossils shimmer and whisper, sometimes with a shell carved on their back. Tender marine monsters, for a few hours, less frightening.

“Here, where the land ends and the sea begins” (Aqui, onde a terra se acaba e o mar começa), words by the greatest poet Luís de Camões (1524–1580), shaped Portugal’s destiny and its deepest test. Now the Altantic Ocean shared by many of us daring sleep on its edge, is testing us in behaviors and sentiments.

Photography Claudine Boeglin @dandyvagabond Photography Claudine Boeglin