Peter Ralston

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs host Peter Neill sits down with Peter Ralston, who has been photographing the coast of Maine since 1978, drawn especially to the working communities that define the coast’s enduring character. Instrumental in forming the Island Institute in 1983, Peter Ralston served as its executive vice-president until 2010, and contributed most of the photography and served as art director for the Institute"s Island Journal since its inception. Peter"s work has been reproduced in many books and magazines, exhibited in galleries, collections and museums throughout the United States and abroad. He is currently working on a major book about the Maine coast. Although, as a young man, Ralston studied very briefly under Ansel Adams, he acknowledges the greater artistic influence of a lifetime of association with the Wyeth family: close friends and life-changing mentors. He continues to spend as much time as he possibly can on and around islands.