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José Luis González Macías became fascinated by the buildings and their stories when researching a design project and has now published an ‘atlas’ of the most striking examples

José Luis González Macías acknowledges that he was not the most obvious person to write a book about lighthouses. “I grew up a long way from the sea and had no personal connection with the world of seafaring,” he says. “My professional life has been more centred on books than coastlines.”

As a writer, designer, illustrator and publisher of books and graphic materials for museums and other cultural institutions, he had always dreamed of creating a personal project that would put equal emphasis on images and text, but the fascination with lighthouses came later. He had been commissioned to design an album cover and came up with the image of lighthouses floating on asteroids. As he was researching designs, gazing at picture after picture of lighthouses, he says, “a strange attraction unexpectedly took hold of me, and it was as if I found myself trapped in my own isolated lighthouse”. This combination of “curiosity, and a fascination with the unknown”, together with a childhood love of maps, resulted in the idea for the atlas.

He selected the 34 lighthouses featured in the book based on their remoteness and on his interest in their histories, trying to make sure that he chose a variety of locations and stories. “Even though lighthouse-keeping has been a traditionally masculine occupation,” he adds, “I wanted to include a number of histories where there were female lighthouse-keepers as protagonists. But ultimately there were some incredible towers that I had to leave out.”

As he began looking into the lighthouses and the people whose lives centred on these “impossible architectures”, he quickly realised that the book was about much more than the structures; it grew into an exploration of themes of solitude and survival. “The lighthouse-keepers often found themselves in extreme conditions of isolation and survival,” he says. “There are stories of personal courage, of heroes who save lives, but there are also ghosts, obsessions and nightmares. Literature and cinema have often used lighthouses as a means of exploring the human condition. Edgar Allan Poe, for example, in his last, incomplete story, incarcerates a writer in a remote Norwegian lighthouse.”

For González Macías, the book also became a way of examining our changing relationship with the natural world. In the process of studying these lighthouses – many of which, he says, are “dying” as they are replaced by automation – did he conclude that the evolution of new technologies in navigation has led to a loss of the healthy respect for the forces of sea and weather that our ancestors would have had?

“Certainly technological advances have broadened our vision of the world, and digital maps and geolocation have enabled us to move around with greater safety,” he says. “But at the same time I think we are losing our link with nature, and with that, the type of knowledge that it’s only possible to acquire through close proximity with the natural world. The sailors of the past would have known that they were at the mercy of the elements.”

He researched and wrote the book during the Covid lockdowns, and so did not visit his remote subjects in person. “For two years I was consulting books, maps, nautical charts and looking at specialist lighthouse sites online. If I’d been able to visit the lighthouses, the book would have been completely different. I feel that travelling in my imagination through territories I’ve never been to has given me a lot of freedom as a writer. After all, Jules Verne never went to Patagonia to visit the lighthouse at the end of the world.”

Did the isolation that we all experienced to a greater or lesser degree during the pandemic give him a greater sense of empathy with the lighthouse-keepers of the past? “There’s no doubt that solitude is present throughout the book. But I think solitude has two faces. If it’s chosen, it can bring peace and happiness, and if it’s imposed, it can bring you to desperation and madness.”

I ask if he has a particular favourite among all the lighthouses in the book. “It’s not a favourite, but the one I think of most now, because of the current situation, is a Ukrainian lighthouse called Adziogol. It’s a magnificent 64-metre steel structure designed by the Russian engineer Vladimir Shukhov, built in the estuary of the river Dnieper. I’m praying that it will be kept safe from the injustice of the war.’

Now that we’re free to travel, does he intend to visit the lighthouses he has spent so long thinking about? “No,” he says. “I’m scared of the sea.”

• A Brief Atlas of the Lighthouses at the End of the World is published on 19 October by Picador (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

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