A wedding on the cliff path

Ines wrote to me in January with one sentence: “We would like to be photographed the way you photograph strangers.” I took that as a brief.

The ceremony was at four, on a headland forty minutes from the nearest road. Eleven guests, one folding table, a borrowed record player. There was no list of group photographs because there were no groups; there were friends who had known them for twenty years and who mostly stood in the grass and cried.

A field away

I used the long lens for most of the day and stayed on the far side of the grass. People forget you are there after the first half hour if you never come close. The portraits you see in the series were not set up: they are what happened when two people were left alone with a path.

The veil

The wind came up two minutes before the vows. I had been worried about it all day, because it was blowing the flowers over. Then Ines turned her back to the sea and the veil lifted behind her and I understood the wind was the best thing at the wedding.

What they asked for afterwards

A book, not a gallery. Forty pages, one frame per spread, printed on uncoated paper. The couple tells me it lives on the table by the door. That is where I would like all my pictures to live.