Essays
18 September 2025
Edges of the map: sabkha and mangrove
The salt flat and the tidal forest are the country's hardest landscapes to picture, and the most rewarding to try.
The sabkha resists the eye: a silver nothing that refuses to become a view. The mangrove is its opposite, all tangle and tide. Both are the edges of the inhabited map, and both have drawn a generation of painters.
What they offer is difficulty, which is to say honesty. A landscape that will not flatter is a good test of a way of seeing.