Going Deep (Inside the Coast and Islands of Maine)

“Settle in and listen. It’ll be worth it.”—Heather Cox Richardson

A master storyteller’s intimate visual portrait of Maine, on land and sea—opening the door to a world few outsiders ever see.

To a casual visitor, the coast of Maine is paradise—a place of summer respite and “vacationland” ease. But to Peter Ralston, it is a world of powerful beauty, unique character, and tightly woven communities that survive against long odds.

For over forty-five years, acclaimed photographer Peter Ralston has documented the working coast of Maine with a “clear-eyed outsider” perspective that has earned him the hard-won trust of its most working coastal and island communities. Ralston doesn’t just photograph; here he learned to “go deep”—to look beneath the surface and to capture the emotional truth of this, his most celebrated subject to which he was introduced by Andrew and Betsy Wyeth in 1978.

In Going Deep, Ralston presents a stunning curated collection of his work, weaving together iconic images with the revealing stories behind them.

From hauling sheep in an open dory between islands, to the quiet resilience of winter harbors, Ralston’s eye captures the liminal spaces between land and sea, hope and survival, outsider and insider.

Going Deep is far more than “just” a photography book; it transcends mere regionalism as a visual memoir of a life spent in a world of working waterfronts, the "lifeboat ethics" of small, working villages, and the enduring spirit of a place that offers profound lessons of community and caring, lessons that seem particularly stirring and applicable today.