A recreation of Celia Thaxter's 1893 garden. Photo by Peter Randall '63

The Photos of Peter Randall '63

The Isles of Shoals appear in poetry and prose, in fiction and paintings. Yet few artists have captured the intimate portraits of island wildlife or the vivid contrasts between bleached rocks and blue sea as sensitively or prolifically as photographer Peter Randall '63.

When Randall first visited the isles in the early 1970s to take photographs for a story in the now-defunct New Hampshire Profiles magazine, he was mesmerized by the beauty of the large migratory tropical birds, such as Black-Crowned Herons and Glossy Ibises, that nest there in spring. He would return whenever he could to wait for hours for just the right light and the chance to capture images of a bird lifted high on a sea breeze or sharing bits of fish with its fluffy chicks.

Randall's Shoals photographs became the basis for two of his books, All Creation and the Isles of Shoals (1980) and Out on the Shoals (1995). "I like the horizontal aspect of the isles -- the rocky coastline and the interaction of sea and shore," he explains. "It's a difficult place to get to, but the spiritual and intellectual atmosphere draws you back."

Randall, who now runs his publishing company, Peter E. Randall Publisher, has reissued or newly published some two dozen books about the isles. The most recent, Gosport Remembered (1997), edited by Randall and Maryellen Burke, features long-lost photographs of the last full-time residents of Star Island's dying fishing community, Gosport Village, in the latter part of the 19th century. For more information, check Randall's Web site.