The Wild Horses of Sable Island

Sable Island, a small island off the coast of eastern Canada is the site of some 500 wild horses, 500 shipwrecks and 500 years of known history. Never settled, the island, also known as the “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” has seen temporary occupation by shipwrecked sailors, transported convicts, pirates and wreckers. The wild horses, named for the island they inhabit, abandoned there long ago or cast ashore from wrecks, are now the only terrestrial mammals on Sable Island. Roberto Dutesco’s twenty years’ documentation of Sable Island comes to you as a stunning volume of photographs, an unprecedented collection of extraordinary moments in a place uninhabited by humans, where the wild horses run free, unaware and unafraid of man. Dutesco portrays the wild beauty of these horses as well as the barren and unspoiled quality of the island, creating an immersive photographic memoir that captures the soul and spirit. The Romanian-born Canadian photographer’s aim is to document and record this enchanted place for posterity, for our children’s children, as an important place in Earth’s history, and more so in our current moment, when unique wild places are vanishing. It is Dutesco’s life project, celebrating the beauty he encountered in a place forgotten by time, desire and conquest—Sable Island.