©Kerry Mansfield, Shadow Trace XV, SHADOW TRACE XVI emerges from an expanding relationship with the Sea Ranch landscape, where remote locations called across rocky divides. My shadow—an ever-present companion—perches along precarious cliffs, leaving ghost traces in its wake. With each passage, my worn pathways inscribe new layers of memory, accumulating like strata and mapping a steady presence within the shifting terrain.

The Intertidal Project by Kerry Mansfield is a meditation on time, memory, and our relationship to a particular place. Through years of sustained observation of a particular stretch of Northern California coastline, Mansfield’s photography records a moment to reveal the accumulation of moments that examine the invisible layers of experience that bind us to the landscapes we love. As tides rise and recede, rocks emerge and disappear, and the coastline is continually rewritten, memory becomes inseparable from the land itself.

What began as an intimate investigation of perception has evolved into an urgent reflection on environmental change. The very places that shaped this body of work are now disappearing under the pressures of a changing climate, transforming a personal archive into a record of loss. By making time visible, The Intertidal Project asks us to consider not only what we see, but what we stand to lose—and how paying closer attention to the places we cherish may be the first step toward protecting them.

A conversation with the artist follows.

©Kerry Mansfield, THE INTERTIDAL PROJECT RETURN LOCATION ATTEMPT STRING MAP 2019 – 2024, The eight-foot-wide string map tracks all return visits to curated locations destined for TIDAL BLOCK works. The large photographs document my initial visits to each spot serving as guide “targets”. The smaller photographs strung to their “target” origin prints capture each obsessive attempt to recreate the exact same compositions over five years (and counting).

The INTERTIDAL PROJECT 

The Intertidal Project explores innovative ways to depict the passage of time through my long-term, photo-based work, which examines how memory is formed when a person is affected by a cherished place. Each encounter etches a line of memory in time on both the person and the place, like geological strata. By becoming conscious of these cumulative underlying memories, we can reveal the unfolding of time.

Standing above the Pacific Ocean, I asked, “How can I capture the magnitude of tidal change in a single place?” This question led me to explore new photographic landscapes. The answer came in noticing the subtle difference between perception and awareness. Six years of photographs slowly exposed the depth of reciprocal strata between us while I progressively mapped the interaction between my presence and the coastline.

My existence as a photographer is shaped by the tides, sunrise and sunset, and the scarcity of time. In documenting place, I am also documenting memory—and time itself. Over eight years of unremitting visits to the same locations, I photographed the 11-mile stretch of California coastline known as Sea Ranch. Through meticulous observation, I developed a complex body of work exploring the themes of Memory, Imprint, Mapping, and Strata.

A cherished childhood book “The Art of Japanese Woodblock Printing” inspired my vision to unmask the rocks beneath the water using time instead of panels of color to recreate the landscape. Through 40 visits to Wild Moor Point over the next four years of impassioned work, one resulting “Tidal Block” picture became the fulcrum of the Project. Fascinated with the accumulation of time I crafted the picture to relay the depth of our experience together and unveiled a singular day that could never exist revealing all the tidal levels.

From above, the coastline appears fixed—but walking its edge from an ant’s perspective reveals a map in constant flux. My 8×4’ string map traces hundreds of visits to select locations, while journal pages scrawled on cliff edges recorded passing days, and the ocean lapped at the ink, leaving its own replies. Shadows lingered, footprints etched contours, and the landscape responded. Recent work—including video, sound, and 3-D forms—invites viewers to step into the experience of the place itself.

Since 2023, colossal winter storms have reshaped the Northern California coastline. A narrow cliff edge where I once stood now lies in jumbled rocks a hundred feet below. Losing this vantage point has erased critical data collected over six years and brought a profound sense of loss. My archive of time, memory, and place now confronts extreme weather, raising a new question: “How do I show what used to be here?”

The Sea Ranch coastline has been profoundly impacted by climate change, shifting the project from inward reflection to engagement with external forces. My latest work in progress, LOSING GROUND, confronts the relentless advance of environmental loss. Sharing my project can foster recognition of the space between perception and awareness —a crucial first step in addressing climate change through collective empathy.

©Kerry Mansfield, INK TRACE WASH RELEASE, Documenting the moment before photographing an INK TRACE, I release my completed journal page into the ocean to witness the paper traveling in the water until it’s retrieved and transforms into an INK TRACE image.

For over two decades, Kerry Mansfield has developed a photographic practice focused on the passage of time and how it shapes our perceptions of what we see and experience. Since 2018, she has undertaken The Intertidal Project, an ongoing, long-term documentation of eleven miles of Northern California coastline. Kerry’s expertise, creative vision, and rigorous discipline guide the ambitious work through extensive photographic documentation, research, self-devised systems, journals, notebooks, and film—forming a deeply layered record that bridges artistic inquiry and environmental observation.

Pushing the boundaries of traditional landscape photography, Kerry transforms the artwork itself into both a creative and investigative vehicle through which environmental change is examined and made visible. Through a distinctive technical approach, the work records subtle environmental shifts that reveal the fragile and increasingly drastic alterations of the landscape.

Through The Intertidal Project, she constructs a sustained portrait of climate change as it unfolds, positioning the work as both a powerful artistic practice and an evolving visual observatory of a coastline undergoing profound environmental transformation.

Instagram: @kerrymansfield

©Kerry Mansfield, WILD MOOR POINT TARGET PRINT IN-SITU, I held a sample “target” photograph with an overlaid grid during each “Return Location Attempt” to Wild Moor Point. Every visit generated thousands of frames amassed to craft the first TIDAL BLOCK print. The lines mimic the same grid in the camera viewfinder affording the opportunity to manifest the archetypical compositions based on Japanese wood block printing.

Tell us about your growing up and what brought you to photography.

Each generation on my mother’s side has produced an artist. My uncle initially taught me how to draw, but at eleven years old I was given a small point-and-shoot film camera. During our family’s annual Fourth of July celebration, I became the designated photographer. The developed film revealed I had accidentally cut off everyone’s head in the frame. Since portraits were clearly not in my future, I began setting up still life arrangements complete with Hubba Bubba gum, colored pencils, and stuffed animals.

I was always arranging things as a child—redecorating my room, moving furniture, and making things to hang on the outside of my bedroom door. Looking back, the impulse to organize visual elements and construct something from them was already there.

Photography was an expensive hobby for a child, so I returned to drawing and eventually took undergraduate art classes at UC Berkeley. I could only draw what was directly in front of me, never solely from my imagination, and over time the process became tedious. A summer photography course led by Lewis Watts revived my interest in the medium. I quickly realized I could photograph what was in front of me rather than spend hours drawing it by hand. The immediacy was inspiring.

Berkeley’s lack of a photography program redirected me to an independent major in American Studies. Fortunately, Professor Watts mentored me through two years of directed photography study while I ran the photo lab on campus. My path after graduation took some unexpected turns, but my love for photography never wavered.

©Kerry Mansfield, WILD MOOR POINT HIGHEST & LOWEST TIDE 04.2020, High and low tide images captured on one day during a “Return Location Attempt” at Wild Moor Point. The photographs illustrate the drastic shift in daily tidal levels and that were utilized to craft the resulting TIDAL BLOCK image.

The Intertidal Project spans more than eight years. What kept drawing you back to the same places, and how did your relationship with the coastline evolve over that time?

In 2017, a much-needed vacation from city life beckoned me to the nearby Sea Ranch coast for rejuvenation. The love affair between the eleven-mile Bluff Trail and me began almost immediately. My camera, however, remained in the city until 2018. The crashing waves and the sight of water ricocheting through massive rocks like a pinball machine eventually demanded that I photograph them, and I began by making straightforward landscapes of the viewpoints that captivated me.

Initially, returning to the same places was a practical problem. I wasn’t always sure how to find my favorite spots again, so I built a string map using iPhone GPS metadata. Once I could find them, I kept returning primarily because I had become deeply attached to particular places. Slowly, repetition revealed that the locations I thought I knew were never quite the same. Tides shifted, sand disappeared and returned, rocks were newly exposed, and the light completely altered familiar views.

A studio move required me to build a new string map, but by then I was also mapping multiple visits to favorite locations. I continued returning without a clear series in mind, brainstorming and making hundreds of thousands of photographs over the coming years. What began as an emotional attachment to the coastline gradually became a sustained practice of attention. A deep relationship formed between the ocean, rocks, cliffs, and me—and the changes I began to recognize gave me another reason to keep returning.

©Kerry Mansfield, INK TRACE I, Writing about the expanding bond between the Sea Ranch coastline and me was an organic evolution but an ordinary journal would not allow us to engage in conversation. Multiple material tests led to ink strewn vellum pages expounding the project’s status while mapping our encounters. I washed them in the water sharing my thoughts while the ocean left its own imprinted reply.

You write about the difference between perception and awareness. How do you distinguish the two, and how has photography helped you bridge that gap?

For me, perception is what I can see in front of me; awareness includes what I have learned to recognize over time. I understood the difference during a morning walk after a winter storm had stripped an enormous amount of sand from the beaches and pulled it into deeper water.

A fellow hiker stopped to marvel at a beach filled with boulders and asked how the waves had carried so many rocks onto the sand. She was stunned when I explained that the opposite had occurred. The boulders had always been there. What was missing was nearly fifteen feet of sand that had previously concealed them.

The chasm between what I could see and what I knew was striking. After years of returning and photographing the same locations, I could envision the rocks beneath the sand even after the beach eventually returned. Most people see what is immediately visible, but sustained attention can reveal an awareness of what lies beneath their feet.

Photography helped me bridge that gap through accumulation. In 2018, I had asked myself, “How can I show all of the tidal levels in one spot simultaneously?” Two years later, my childhood fascination with a book about woodblock printing resurfaced. I began thinking about layers of time instead of traditional layers of stamped color. That idea eventually gave me a way to construct an image from what I had learned through repeated observation rather than from a single moment of perception.

©Kerry Mansfield, SHADOW TRACE VI, SHADOW TRACE VI at Sea Pine Bluffs emerges from an expanding relationship with the Sea Ranch landscape, where remote locations called across rocky divides. My shadow—an ever-present companion—perches along precarious cliffs, leaving ghost traces in its wake. With each passage, my worn pathways inscribe new layers of memory, accumulating like strata and mapping a stead presence within the shifting terrain.

Your photographs often reveal the accumulation of time. What challenges did you face in making time visible through a still image?

The greatest challenge has been trying to hold the photographic frame still so that time can move through it. To reveal change, I need to return to the same location and photograph from as close to the original position as possible. GPS coordinates can place me within roughly six feet, but six feet is an enormous distance when attempting to align images made years apart.

I work entirely handheld. Many of my locations are too close to cliff edges or among rocks where using a tripod is impractical, so my body becomes part of the measuring apparatus. I began using an original “feet guide” photograph to replicate my stance and camera position. I sometimes joke that my permanently fused right wrist makes me a walking monopod, but even that has its limitations.

When the feet guides proved insufficient, the process expanded into guide photographs, spreadsheets, accumulated environmental data, eight project notebooks, process binders, and a four-by-six-foot string map tracking return locations and attempts. Before that framework existed, I spent many days cursing my unmatched results.

In some ways, the effort is futile. After making more than one million photographs along the coastline, perfect alignment remains rare—although the occasional successful match has been known to inspire a victory lap around my studio. I have come to understand that the difficulty of perfect repetition is also where time becomes visible. My systems are designed to eliminate variables, yet the differences I cannot eliminate—the shifting sand, eroding cliffs, changing rocks, and my own physical position—reveal the passage of time.

©Kerry Mansfield, TIDAL STRATA, Curated frames from 32 days of tidal levels taken over four years at Wild Moor Point map the imprinted memories between the rocks, waves, and me. Fascinated with the accumulation of time I crafted the TIDAL STRATA picture to relay the depth of our experience together and the obsessive efforts behind crafting the TIDAL BLOCK.

The project began as an intimate exploration of memory but has become increasingly concerned with climate change. At what point did you realize the work had taken on a new urgency?

Since 2023, colossal winter storms have physically reshaped this coastline. At Wild Moor Point, the narrow cliff edge from which I photographed for six years collapsed and now lies among jumbled rocks approximately one hundred feet below.

I sat at the remaining cliff edge with my legs dangling over the side, simultaneously confronting the loss of a place I knew intimately and realizing that the meaning of my archive had changed. I could no longer access a critical vantage point, and the photographs I had originally made to investigate perception, memory, and duration had become evidence of a landscape that no longer existed in the same form.

This rupture initiated Losing Ground, the newest chapter of The Intertidal Project. The central question shifted from “How do I show the accumulation of time here?” to “How do I show what used to be here?” The work now brings personal memory into direct contact with environmental loss. By combining images made before and after the storms, I am exploring how photography can register absence—not simply as documentation of damage, but as an experience of recognition, grief, and altered awareness

©Kerry Mansfield, TIDAL BLOCK STRATA, To illustrate the method honed over four years to answer to my initial question, “how can I see all the tidal levels at once?”, I decided to convey the complexity behind the process of building the TIDAL BLOCK. Inspired by my RETURN LOCATION ATTEMPT STRING MAP I incorporated the original Wild Moor Point target print, and all the incarnations of tidal levels used to craft the TIDAL BLOCK exposing the interrelationship between all the components.

Can you talk about some of the additional elements you have used to expand your ideas?

Photography remains at the center of the project, but over time I realized a single still image could not contain all of the relationships I was discovering within the archive. Video, sound, three-dimensional pieces, and handmade books allow me to bring different strands of accumulated experience into contact.

In the short film Sand Tides at Buddha Beach, photographs made during repeated visits dissolve into one another as sand recedes and returns, revealing and concealing the rocks beneath it. The continuous sound of the ocean holds the location together while its visual state changes. Learning software designed for film and sound editing has become essential as I search for new ways to translate these experiences.

In 2026, I also began creating a group of interwoven handmade books that physically combine distinct themes within the project. Earlier, the Tidal Block accordion book used rocks and water photographed at different times, echoing the layered construction of the childhood woodblock-printing book that originally inspired the work. Viewers often describe moving through the accordion as an experience of accumulated time.

Ultimately, I envision an immersive exhibition bringing these elements together with my project notebooks and inscribed vellum journal pages. Each form allows me to reveal relationships within the archive that a single photograph cannot hold on its own.

©Kerry Mansfield, TIDAL BLOCK WILD MOOR POINT, TIDAL BLOCK emerged from repeated visits to Wild Moor Point, where tidal conditions varied dramatically—white water cresting the tallest rocks one day, nearly absent the next. A single photograph could not convey this range. The question became: how can the full magnitude of tidal change be seen at once? To address this, I developed a method inspired by Japanese woodblock printing. Rock formations were organized into “blocks” based on elevation. The tallest rocks are filled with white water, while consistently exposed areas remain empty. Mid-level rocks are partially filled, reflecting the shifting intertidal zone—sometimes submerged, sometimes revealed. The lowest, sub-tidal rocks are left empty, as they are rarely visible. Created over four years from more than 14,000 frames, TIDAL BLOCK constructs a singular moment that could never exist—bringing multiple tidal states together and revealing the accumulated strata of time within one landscape.

Looking back over nearly a decade of this project, were there discoveries that surprised you or changed your original intentions?

The greatest surprise has been discovering how much of the landscape is invisible at any single moment. I originally began by studying tidal levels, but repeated visits revealed other systems of change I had never intended to document.

At Buddha Beach, I watched the sand rise and fall by as much as fifteen feet over six years. The rocks beneath the beach were repeatedly revealed and concealed, an experience that eventually inspired Sand Tides Strata. More recently, I began recognizing physical losses within familiar rock formations. Comparing current observations with my archive revealed multiple areas where portions of rock that existed only years earlier are now gone. Learning how to make that absence visible initiated an entirely new visual investigation within Losing Ground.

Constant reconnaissance has become critical. A beach formed by an unusual accumulation of sand has recently returned after a six-year absence. In a canyon behind the coastline, I encountered newly fallen boulders that were frightening in scale. My work has always revolved around the ocean, yet my first thought was that they had to be documented.

The project has continually expanded my original intentions. I began by asking how to show tidal change in a single place. Nearly a decade later, the landscape itself keeps revealing what I need to pay attention to next.

©Kerry Mansfield, DRIED INK TRACE at WILD MOOR POINT, After INK TRACES are retrieved from the water, they’re folded and dried. The resulting pattern of overlapping ink reveals the intersection between my thoughts about the project in process and the ocean’s reply at spots visited consistently for years along the coastal edge.

Is The Intertidal Project complete, or do you see it continuing to evolve as the landscape itself continues to change?

I no longer think of The Intertidal Project as something that will reach a conventional point of completion. Individual works and chapters can be resolved, but the larger project continues to evolve because the landscape itself is still changing.

My project notebooks contain years of originally conceived works that I have yet to manifest, while continued documentation keeps generating new questions and visual problems. Increasingly, the landscape is directing the work. A cliff collapses, a rock formation loses material, or a beach returns after six years, and my understanding of the archive shifts again.

I also feel a responsibility to continue documenting even when I don’t yet know how an image will be used. Losing Ground taught me that photographs made years earlier for entirely different reasons can acquire critical significance as the landscape changes. I can no longer assume that I know, in the present, which images the future will make important.

My commitment to the project has not wavered, but my role within it has changed. I began with questions I wanted to ask of the coastline. Now, more often, I find myself responding to what the coastline reveals.

©Kerry Mansfield, WILD MOOR POINT FOOT TARGET IN-SITU LOSING GROUND, By documenting the origin 2020 target print, originally used to mark a fixed photographic position for Return Location Attempts, is marked and held in place at the site in 2025 following the collapse of the rock ledge.

Who or what currently inspires you?

My current obsession is Edward Tufte. During a recent workshop with Todd Hido, Marina Luz recognized how essential visual expressions of information are to my work. Before I arrived one morning, she placed a Tufte book at my seat. I bought four more after the workshop.

Tufte’s ability to organize complex information into visual systems without sacrificing clarity is incredibly inspiring to me. I have spent years accumulating an enormous amount of visual and environmental information through The Intertidal Project, and increasingly I am thinking about how that complexity can be translated without flattening it. His work has opened another way for me to consider how information, structure, and visual experience can coexist.

©Kerry Mansfield, WILD MOOR POINT LOSING GROUND, Combining photographic elements from 2019 and a new reference photograph taken in 2026 the image shows the ground as it previously existed coupled with traced outlines derived from the status of rock ledge seven years later. The markings illustrate rocks that once defined my standing position at Wild Moor Point, used throughout the four-year process of creating the TIDAL BLOCK (completed in 2021). Empty areas identify the rock ledge that was lost during a superstorm in 2023. This image also serves as a structural guide for the LOSING GROUND sculptural work currently in progress.

©Kerry Mansfield, SHADOW TRACE VI: LOSING GROUND at SEA PINE BLUFF, Crafted to reveal the significant rock loss caused by six years of severe coastal storms the image uses the same method developed for TIDAL BLOCK II: LOSING GROUND, a 2026 reference photograph was traced to mark these shifts at this critical location. The outlined areas are layered onto the original 2019 photograph.

©Kerry Mansfield, TIDAL BLOCK II: LOSING GROUND. Based on the original TIDAL BLOCK, TIDAL BLOCK II: LOSING GROUND at WILD MOOR POINT reveals the impact of coastal climate change at the project’s primary location. Blank areas within the large rock formation signify the dramatic damage inflicted by storms, culminating in 2026.

©Kerry Mansfield, Wild Moor Point Losing Ground Sculpture

©Kerry Mansfield, Wild Moor Point Losing Ground