The Lucent Logbook

Shoreline is the line where two wisdoms of man meet – the wisdom of living on sea and the wisdom of living on land. The sea wisdom comes from open opportunities, limitless resources, freedom of movement, and sense of solidarity. The land wisdom comes from the smallness of fruitful field areas, borders with neighbours, ever-present lack of space. Time has shaped the experience of living in nature and recorded it into the memory of the people living on the shore – it is the skill of living together with nature, reaching back a long time, to the beginning of sea.

The touching line of land and sea offers man many opportunities for organising his life – on shoreline, the harvests are more varied and the horizon is more calling. On the shoreline, man has learned during thousands of years to sense the harsh inevitable power of the forces of nature and their strive for balance. But today, the wisdom of living has moved away from the shore. It has moved to cities where people think they know better how to live. Though, in city, it is often forgotten what wind is, how fish move, why there are seals, where fields end and waves begin.

As the Baltic Sea is young and was born only after the ice age, it has always seen people’s activities on its shores. In the beginning, they were seal hunters and fishers who also dared venturing between waves on chunks of ice or in small boats. Then, others came and created fields, felled forests, burned tar, lifted stones. Boats were built into ships, ports were established and goods were begun to be hauled. Seaways were drawn, towns and forts were built, channels were excavated and wave breakers were built, bombs were thrown and sea mines were planted, cables and pipelines were laid. With time, the ancient wisdom of living on shore started to fade, the last of it being crammed into folklore and hobbies. But the shore still calls people. The shoreline where land and sea meet is a line that shows the balance of nature. Here, where sea is not rushing far into land and land is not conquering sea, man finds his balance.

This book started with a wish to tell about the wisdom of living together with nature and about the difficult questions related to this. This book tells about the biosphere reserves and national parks of the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, as seen through the eyes of seven photographers: the Saaristomeri biosphere reserve (Finland), the biosphere reserve of the Western Estonian Archipelago, North Vidzeme biosphere reserve (Latvia), Slitere national park (Latvia) and Cape Kura national park (Lithuania). Texts in the book are presented in eight languages: English, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Finnish, Swedish, Russian and German. The photographs used in the book mainly originate from summer 2007.

You can see the excerpt of the book here.

Idarand (The East Coast)
published by Arhipelaag, Kärdla 2008
editor Toomas Kokovkin
designer Mae Kivilo
photographers Clive Evans, Gunnar Mjaugedal, Dainius Labutis, Ramunas Danisevicius, Valdis Brauns, Toomas Kokovkin
invited photos by Tiit Leito

acknowledgements: Annastina Sarlin, Laura Zvingule, Andris Urtans, Ellen and Stefan Sitzmann, Lina Dikšaite, Giedrius Norvaisas, Ere Naat.

Publishing of the book is financed by the UNESCO Participation Programme.

The book: Idarand

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