Unique photographs captured on glass and spanning 100 years of lifeboat heroes and their vessels are coming into focus for a new exhibition.

The images include those from the historic archive of the famous Beken family from the Isle of Wight who have been photographing maritime activity around the Solent since the turn of the 20th century.

There are also beautiful glass plate images from an inspiring modern day odyssey called The Lifeboat Station Project.

The eight-year mission, which is the brainchild of photographer Jack Lowe, began in January 2015.

He is visiting all 238 RNLI stations in the UK and Ireland to capture them using Wet Plate Collodion, a Victorian process that creates stunning images on glass.

Jack has been travelling around in a former ambulance he has converted into a mobile darkroom.

He makes portraits using a camera made in 1905, and then develops the images in his ambulance.

Visitors to the Calm Before the Storm: The Art of Photographing Lifeboats exhibition at Poole Museum will be able to see 55 images from Jack’s journey, along with glass plates he has made and the camera on which he learnt how to create them.

The exhibition also marks the first showing for a new artwork entitled ‘Lifeboat Slipways 2015-2018’. For this Jack has created a ‘gridded tableau’ of nine all-weather lifeboat slipways from around the coast – a nod to the work of pioneering German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher, known for their grouped images of industrial structures.

Jack, grandson of Dad’s Army star Arthur Lowe, is also involved in a programme of outreach activities that will include talks and workshops. The aim is to use the Beken archive and glass plate photography to engage communities with the RNLI’s long history.

He said: “The word photography means drawing with light and that is how I think about it still. I adore photography in this very raw, basic form – light falling on chemicals. It really is magical.”

Spread over two floors of the museum, the exhibition will take visitors on a journey from the lifeboat builders of the early 20th century to the faces of the brave volunteers who crew the high-tech lifeboats of today.

On the way, they will discover stories of historic rescues; find out about the lifeboats that went to war, and uncover the alchemy behind glass plate photography.

The exhibition was made possible with the support of both the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) and Christopher Andreae and The Scorpion Trust.

The exhibition runs from January 26 to April 22.