Kerry Mansfield's The Intertidal Project: Eight Years Documenting Climate Change on the Sea Ranch Coast

Kerry Mansfield's photographic endeavor, The Intertidal Project, initiated in 2018, captures an 11-mile segment of the Northern California coastline known as Sea Ranch. Over the span of eight years, she has produced hundreds of thousands of images, creating a rich exploration of themes such as memory, mapping, and geological layers. Following significant winter storms in 2023 that altered the coastline and caused a cliff at Wild Moor Point to collapse—where she had documented for six years—Mansfield's work transitioned into a new phase, Losing Ground, which addresses the ongoing environmental decline. Her methodology includes a tracking map of visits, guide photos, spreadsheets, and eight notebooks. Influenced by Japanese woodblock prints, she devised a technique to depict all tidal levels in one image, resulting in Tidal Block, made from over 14,000 frames over four years. The project has expanded to include video, sound, 3-D forms, and handmade books, with Edward Tufte serving as a contemporary inspiration. This work serves as both an artistic expression and a dynamic visual record of a dramatically changing coastline.