Johanna Wolfe


Pushing Water series
c-prints, two sizes:
19.25 by 23.5 in.    edition of 5 + 2 APs
30 by 40 in.    edition of 3 + 2 APs

Shot on film in Miami, Florida in 2010 and 2011, these photographs are all untitled.


I wanted to visually describe something massive – the logistics around the Port of Miami – on a smaller scale,
by focusing my lens in particular on the tug boats and pilot boats that make it all possible.
The title, Pushing Water, comes from an explanation I received about the movement of large maritime vessels.
It means moving against and in concert with a fluid force – something that sounds at once poetic, admirable and
seemingly impossible. It got me thinking about basic systems of cooperation and coordination – the elements
that constitute any grand orchestrations.
I wanted to look at the building blocks, the smaller pieces that all need to be perfectly in play in order for the
larger system’s choreography to function.  What I found were ad-hoc nuclear families – captains and pilots as
patriarchs, deckhands and engineers as their charges – who live and work together for weeks or months at a time.
I saw them as romantic heroes, fulfilling their gritty manual labor through a combination of finesse and physics.