Conversations from the Pointed Firs 9/6/24: Peter Ralston

Host: Peter Neill
Producer: Trisha Badger
Music by Casey Neill

Conversations from the Pointed Firs is a monthly audio series with Maine-connected authors and artists discussing new books and creative projects that invoke the spirit of Maine, its history, its ecology, its culture, and its contribution to community and quality of life. Airs the first Friday of every month from 4-5pm. Online at pointedfirs.org.

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs host Peter Neill sits down with Peter Ralston. Peter is a marine photographer, 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.

About the host:
Peter Neill is founder and director of the World Ocean Observatory, a web-based place of exchange for information and educational services about the health of the ocean. In 1972, he founded Leete’s Island Books, a small publishing house specializing in literary reprints, the essay, photography, the environment, and profiles of indigenous healers and practitioners of complimentary medicine around the world. He holds a profound interest in Maine, its history, its people, its culture, and its contribution to community and quality of life.