By Elyssa Goodman
Waves crash against the hull and ropes fly across the deck as a crew of 35 men maneuvers a rare, 140-foot J-Class sailboat off the coast of Sardinia. With them is photographer Drew Doggett, holding tightly to his camera as the boat speeds through the water.
Photos from that journey—and dozens of others—are captured in “Sail: Majesty at Sea.” In the images, saltwater flashes upward in bubbly bursts of foam and crisp, white sails slice through the sky. You can almost taste the sea spray and feel the whip of the wind just by looking at them.
“Sail,” assembled over the last two and a half years, features 131 black-and-white images of the aforementioned J-Class sailboats as well as the equally rare 12-Meter class sailboats. The book is the product of Doggett’s lifelong love of sailing. Originally from Potomac, Maryland, he learned to sail at 10 years old and says some of his best childhood memories were spent shooting across the Eastern Bay of the Chesapeake in a 14-foot Hobie Cat. “First and foremost, I was drawn to the subject matter through my own personal experiences,” the 31-year-old says. “But more than anything, I was really captivated by the scale, the magnitude, the beauty of how these boats were meticulously designed and how that translates into the craftsmanship.”
“I was really captivated by the scale, the magnitude, the beauty of how these boats were meticulously designed and how that translates into the craftsmanship.”
Doggett sought to both capture and honor what he calls the classic and timeless design of these boats, all of which were produced in the 1920s and 1930s. Last summer, he photographed during 10 different regattas the J-Class sailboats in Sardinia, and the 12-Meter class sailboats in Newport, Rhode Island; and Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. For each day of the regattas, he was either in a helicopter shooting from above, on a chase boat next to the sailboat or actually on the boat—sometimes all three in a single day. It was a humbling, challenging experience, he says, but so important for the aesthetic he was trying to create.
Doggett developed his appreciation for design early in life from his architect father, but photography became his medium of choice as a teenager. However, he didn’t realize he could make a living in the art form until studying human and organizational development at Vanderbilt University. One of the organizations Doggett chose to study because of that deep-seated love for crafting images was a photography studio in nearby Nashville. Soon after, the studio’s proprietor became Doggett’s mentor and taught him how photography could be a fruitful path. Doggett moved to New York after graduating and assisted some of today’s finest fashion photographers, including Annie Leibovitz, Mark Seliger and Steven Klein.
But Doggett felt something was missing. In 2009, he took a month-long trip to Nepal to document remote hill tribes in the Himalayas, hoping to blend his love of travel with his love of photography. The combination worked and led him to pursue a career as a full-time fine art photographer. The images he captured in Nepal became part of his limited-edition book, “Slow Road to China.” His projects have since taken him to document the wild horses of Canada’s Sable Island, the sand dunes in Namibia and the Omo tribe of Omo Valley, Ethiopia. The latter series was accepted into the photographic archives of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art in 2012.
“Sailing is a sport that does not discriminate. It’s young, old; male, female. It favors the bold, the precise.”
Doggett usually partners with a charity for his work, and this time, all artist profits from “Sail” will go directly to The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. The book’s foreword was actually written by a leukemia survivor and America’s Cup-winning tactician, Gary Jobson. “Sailing is a sport that does not discriminate,” Doggett says. “It’s young, old; male, female. It favors the bold, the precise; and cancer, leukemia, lymphoma…also does not discriminate.” Jobson was an integral part of “Sail,” introducing Doggett to the sailors who eventually welcomed him aboard to photograph.
Since we live in a city known for its boating culture (and upcoming international boat show), “Sail: Majesty at Sea” is easy for us to appreciate. With the project’s giving nature and geometry of timeless boats against rippling water, how could we not?
Originally appeared in the Fall 2015 issue.
