Bringing Back the Bay

This text - the result of Warren's ten-year Bay Project - explores the Chesapeake and introduces the people who live and work on its shores. It also considers the changes both have experienced in the past half-century. Featuring the photographs of Marion Warren and the impressions, recollections, and wisdom of the ordinary folk who make the region their home, "Bringing Back the Bay" aims to assess the state of the bay in our own time. Its images and voices blend, giving us commentary with insights, humour and at times, even poetry. Warren has cast his net broadly. He photographs maritime scenes and watermen to be sure, but he explores what lies up the rivers that feed the Bay. He includes images of wetlands and marinas, but also of farms and houses, small-town streets and shops, workers and families. Throughout, his love of the region and aesthetic sensibility are his guiding principles, - as he explains in an informative appendix that relates the story behind each photograph. To complement the illustrations, the photographer's daughter Mame Warren has recorded the observations of dozens of people who know this water and this land intimately.
Their plain language reveals much about life on the Bay, past and present - how it used to be, what has gone wrong, and what might yet be saved. "Bringing Back the Bay" provides documentation of the contemporary Chesapeake and the issues faced in preserving it.