Jack Lowe is a photographer and Founder of the Lifeboat Station Project.
Inspired by his childhood love of lifeboats and photography, he has made it his mission to photograph every single lifeboat station (237 of them) and crew in the British Isles, using original Victorian glass-plate photographic techniques. Jack travels around the country in a decommissioned NHS ambulance (nicknamed Neena), which he uses as a mobile darkroom. It’s an extraordinary, unique and rather eccentric British adventure, with a singular purpose – to record and celebrate the bravery and hard work of the 1000s of volunteer lifeboat men and women who risk their lives to save others.
The project began in January 2015 and has already gathered a huge amount of publicity, from across the world, including on the BBC and ITV, the Times and the Telegraph, and is fully supported by the RNLI – see here: lifeboatstationproject.com/press
The Lifeboat Station Project will not only provide an extraordinary photographic record of a unique institution (see the gallery section of the website here: lifeboatstationproject.com/galleries ) but also an opportunity to revisit the history of each station and to recount the many stories of rescues, tragedies and feats of bravery, as well as providing an unusual and unexpected portrait of our coastline.