CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 7/9/2022

Gorgeous, contemplative and poetic. ‘Alex Webb & Rebecca Norris Webb: Waves’ is new from Radius Books

"Waves is a kind of pandemic logbook of words and photographs on Cape Cod during the waves of the coronavirus,” Alex Webb wrote while the couple were sequestered there from March 2020 through May 2021. “Far from the vibrant urban worlds where I’ve often photographed, I wandered my childhood beaches of Wellfleet, where I followed the subtle movements of time and tide, wind and water. Meanwhile, Rebecca photographed the waves of light as they washed through our house of many windows—and wrote spare text pieces to try to emotionally navigate this unsettling time, when so many we know have been caught in its undertow. In a sense, this mid–century modern house—and its previous inhabitants, my artist mother and publisher father— became our compass. Among the thousands of books in my father’s library, Rebecca discovered an early Hogarth edition of one of her favorite novels, Virginia Woolf’s The Waves. The structure of this poetic novel inspired the sequence of our book, in particular Woolf’s interludes, lyrical passages about the sea that flow around the chapters. Echoing Woolf’s interludes, my panoramic seascapes create our book’s tempo, the undulating rhythm of the waves.”