The numerous tattered wooden groynes, broken concrete slabs, and piles of housing bricks bear witness to nature’s relentless attacks. Many of these defenses date back to the period of time after the North Sea Flood of 1953, and in the area around Happisburgh (pronounced /ˈheɪzbrə/) they are really showing their age. Ragged wooden piles, twisted iron reinforcements, and heaps of concrete are all that remain of these monuments to Canute.

A managed retreat from the most vulnerable areas has been proposed. The plan would let the marshes regain their role as a buffer for the flood tides, but the local residents are resisting, asking for more money to be invested into the Sisyphean task of protecting the coast.

And yet, there is a stark beauty in the landscape / seascape. This delicate border of sand and flint cliffs form the ‘last ditch’ defense of the flat Norfolk hinterlands.

[View with PicLens]

Izu is the teardrop peninsula jutting out into the Pacific ocean a little over one hundred kilometers from the mass of gray concrete that is the Tokyo megalopolis. Izu is morning mists, bambooed hilltops and wooden inns nestled in the moist salt air wet from the steam of a hundred hot springs poking through the lush volcanic soil. Izu is where Tokyo’s trains from the 60s go to rust and die, happy recipients of the second most rainfall in Japan. It’s a romantics romance and though proximally near, the makeup of Izu makes for an Alice-through-the-looking-glass kind of trip. For, after all, it is the metamorphosis one undergoes in getting there that is arguably the most important part of the trip. Photographer Jon Ellis is interested in capturing the process of “getting there”, rather than what might be done once arrived.

Please contact licensing@magnesiumphotos.com for more information on licensing these photographs and others on this issue.

Jon Ellis will be participating in the four-person exhibition Fragments of Tokyo from 2/8/10 – 2/14/10 at Place M in Shinjuku. If you are in Tokyo please visit the gallery (click the link below).