Waves: Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb

Waves: Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb by Linda AlterwitzSeptember 29, 2022

Waves (Radius Books 2022) by creative partners Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb includes photographs and text that navigate the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. These photographs were captured by Alex and Rebecca in Cape Cod, Massachusetts from March 2020 through May 2021. Alex captured photographs of the expansive seascapes near his childhood town of Wellfleet, with emphasis on natural occurring rhythms dictated by time, seasons, and tides. Rebecca’s photographs illuminate domestic landscapes, using internal components mostly within the home such as structural elements, screens, windows, and lamps, to reflect and absorb color, light and shadow. Her interwoven poetry contributes to the sensitive navigation through the pandemic.

Many people were able to take advantage of the strange time and embrace nature. Yet there were those who couldn’t leave their homes, required to stay indoors. The photographs and poems in Waves illuminate this time with two voices, traversing the naturally occurring shifts within nature and home.

Inspired by Virginia Woolf ’s novel The Waves, this collaborative project brings together the work of creative partners Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb. This intimate collection serves as a pandemic logbook in words and images, created while the couple was largely sequestered on Cape Cod from March 2020 through May 2021. Rebecca provides original, hand-written poetry that punctuates her lyrical photographs and Alex’s panoramic seascapes. Their images serve as poignant meditations on what it means to be both deeply connected to the world around us and profoundly isolated from much that we hold dear.

Rebecca Norris Webb (born 1956) is an American photographer. Originally a poet, her books often combine text and images. An NEA grant recipient, she has work in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and The Cleveland Museum of Art. Her photographs have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Le Monde, and other magazines. She sometimes collaborates with photographer Alex Webb, her husband and creative partner.

Norris Webb teaches photography workshops with her husband and creative partner, Alex Webb.

Alex Webb (born May 5, 1952) is a photographer known for his vibrant and complex color photographs. He has been a member of Magnum Photos since 1979.

He has exhibited at museums worldwide, including the Whitney Museum of Art, NYC, the Metropolitan Museum, NYC, and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007. He has contributed to Geo, Time, National Geographic, and The New York Times Magazine among others.