Claudio Cambon’s Compelling “Shipbreak”

In 1998, Claudio Cambon boarded the Oil tanker SS Minole on her final journey after 36 years of service. Cambon documented the trip with rich black and white film stock and the resulting digital scans from his new book, Shipbreak, which tells the story of the Minole’s journey from New Orleans to the ship-breaking yards of Chittagong, Bangladesh.

“These photographs give record of this transformation; they ultimately serve as a meditation on how life possesses us more than we do it, and how it mysteriously changes shape from one beautiful form to another, passing through us like light through the filament of a bulb,” writes Cambon.

DigitalFusion scanned, and custom printed the well-preserved black and white negatives. “Each image builds on one another, and artistically adds a clear narrative of death, and re-birth.” Notes Hugh Milstein from DigitalFusion. “Claudio Cambo’s visual sensibility and carefully studied black and white compositions take us back in time to a largely unseen historical event that plays out in Chittagong, Bangladesh”.