SECRET DIRECTORY

He hails from Yorkshire but his photography has made him a champion of surf culture and environmental issues, not to mention the first artist in residence at Tate St Ives.

When he first started taking pictures in his home-town of Castleford, West Yorkshire, Andy Hughes had little inkling that his passion for photography would take him all the way to the Cornish coast. But after taking up surfing at university, Hughes' photos documenting the impact of pollution on the coastline have made him the unofficial chronicler of Cornish surf culture as well as the first Artist in Residence at Tate St Ives.

Aubin & Wills: Tell us about your latest project.

Andy Hughes: My interest at the moment is photographing "surf groms" - basically under 16 year-old surfers, both girls and boys. Surfing is not seen as a particularly big business in this country, but it is in the West Country and the knock on effect in the clothing market all over is quite dramatic. Young people get into the sport and then quickly get bedazzled by corporate sponsorship. My work is a critical look at that. There's a lot of stuff out there just about surfing, but that's not what I want to do.

A&W: You're from Yorkshire originally. How did you get involved in surfing culture and environmental issues?

AH: I was born in Castleford which was a mining town. I left to study fine art at Cardiff University and when I was there I met a couple of guys from Cornwall. They set up this surf group and we all used to bunk off and go surfing near Port Talbot. In the mid-eighties, the sea there was absolutely mingin: turds, panty liners, you name it. It reminded me of Castleford, in the sense that all my family worked down the mines, and it was only later in life that people realised how that environment had affected their health. I remember sitting in the sea and thinking about that.

A&W: Do you think you romanticised Cornwall before you arrived?

AH: I think a lot of people romanticise Cornwall. I know I always felt it was an escape. I always thought I was moving away from the North to this clean, idyllic, romantic lifestyle. Cornwall is incredibly beautiful, of course, but you only have to scratch that surface and it's not what everyone expects.

A&W: Are your environmental concerns an inseparable part of your work?

AH: I think so, but I also think environmentalism means something different than it used to. Joshua Karliner, one of the guys that wrote for my book, introduced me to the term "Greenwash" and he wrote a book about how corporations try to mislead consumers about how green they are. I think one of the things capitalism has done really well is subsume all this eco activity and the next stage is we're all going to be wary of that and a bit "eco-ed out". So it's difficult, at the moment, straddling that line between what people think is art and other things which people think of as campaigning.

A&W: How would you describe the art scene in Cornwall?

AH: People think it's very vibrant and very healthy and there is a younger generation of artists who are doing different things, but most of the galleries in the county are still wrapped up with tourism. When the book came out a few years ago a few local papers covered it, but I had much more press internationally. I had a whole article in the Chicago Tribune and about four lines in the local paper. Whereas if I'd been doing nice pictures of sunsets I'm sure they would have plastered it everywhere.

Dominant Wave Theory by Andy Hughes, published by Booth-Clibborn Editions is out now.