Hasta La Ideas

With the help of Google Earth, Jeffrey Tribe has discovered 12 human heads emerging from the British coastline, as presented in his project, Headlands

As a kid growing up in Suffolk, I well remember my mum noting somewhat bitterly, as we gazed at the Look East weather report, how apt it was that the East Anglian coastline resembled the features of a grumpy old man. Her opinion of the locals was yet to soften after our family’s move south in the 60s.

Jeffrey Tribe, it seems, has had similar ideas – not about the taciturn nature of East Anglians, but about the resemblance of some parts of the UK coastline to human faces. Tribe, who is senior graphics lecturer at Bedford College, has worked the idea into a personal project which uses Google Earth to present 12 ‘Headlands’ alongside short narratives based on the location in the form of cigarette cards.

Each image, he says, is exactly as seen on Google Earth, with no retouching. A selection is shown here: