The Fish Fence

Coastal India · street

A small wooden boat moves through a long line of bamboo stakes pushed into a shallow lake bed, the fisherman standing at the stern. Mostly sky.

Bamboo fish-fences — long lines of stakes pushed into shallow water — are one of the oldest fishing technologies in the subcontinent, and they're still in daily use on lakes and backwaters across the south. The principle is simple: fish that move with the tide get herded into a narrow gap, where a net or trap can be tended by one person from a boat. The fences themselves are repaired every year, the bamboo replaced piece by piece as it rots in the brackish water.

This morning was haze-flat. The lake had no horizon — just a pale band where water met sky, and the receding line of stakes drawn across both. The fisherman was poling himself slowly through the gap. I converted to black and white because colour was a distraction here: the picture is about geometry, about the relationship between a single human figure and the long horizontal of his work. The leaves of a tree drop into the upper-right corner, a small natural counterweight to all that empty centre. Some pictures are arguments for stillness. This is one.

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