Photography Books | Traveling the Shore of the Spanish Sea

Traveling the Shore of the Spanish Sea

The Gulf Coast of Texas & Mexico

Traveling the Shore of the Spanish Sea: The Gulf Coast of Texas and Mexico, published in 2010 by Texas A&M Press, is a profusely illustrated journal, recounting Winningham’s seven years of travel along the Gulf Coast, from the Texas/Louisiana border to the southern tip of Veracruz, Mexico. His journey starts in Port Arthur, Texas, where his photographs suggest a cautionary tale relating to the oil industry and the land. It ends twelve hundred miles down the coast at the end of an old stone road in tropical terrain of indescribable beauty, overlooking the sea. In between, the photographs include natural landscapes, roadside architecture and signage, and images of people Winningham met, working and playing in both cultures.

In 2011, Traveling the Shore of the Spanish Sea won the Ron Tyler Award from the Texas State Historical Association for the Best Illustrated Book on Texas History and the J.B. Jackson Award from the Foundation for Landscape Studies as the Best Illustrated Book on the American Landscape.

The photographer Robert Adams wrote of Winningham’s Spanish Sea:

"Why should we love the world, the difficult world? Accomplished picturemasters and storytellers, of whom Geoff Winningham is surely one, help us toward an answer by describing individual regions—in this case the relatively little known western Gulf Coast – so vividly and fondly that they impart even to our distant homes a borrowed splendor. I am grateful. Winningham knows that he has composed in some respects an elegy, but it is a tender and redemptive one."