Arthur Fink’s pending book of photography might epitomize the two contrasting spheres of Maine’s coastline, the artistic and the utilitarian, more sharply than any other book of Maine photography. The book’s title, Dancers and Dead Fish, says it all.

That title doesn’t mean the book by the Peaks Island resident is about choreography involving seafood, but rather contrasting photographs of dancers in motion and fish on ice. Fink finds a connection between the two; both groups of photos focus on the minute details of the natural world, whether it’s a stretching limb or a scale on a back, that often are overlooked. That’s what he wants to document with his camera.

Creating art, Fink said, is his way of trying “to explain the parts of the world we don’t understand.”

Not everyone understands, though, especially when it comes to the photos of the fish.

“My mother got very upset,” he said. “A lot of people kind of said ‘yuck’.”

But Nick Alfiero, co-owner of the Harbor Fish Market in Portland, isn’t one of those people. Fink has been commuting to the market to photograph fish for some time. Alfiero is used to watching people taking photos on the wharf of things that people who work with the sea take for granted, like moss on a rock or a seagull standing on one leg, so he’s not surprised that Fink likes to photograph his fish.

“Apparently, he finds beauty in that, and that’s great,” Alfiero said.

Fink was predisposed at an early age to image-making; his father was a graphic designer who designed the iconic red and blue wrapper for Bazooka bubblegum.

“I grew up in a house where images were important,” he said.

His family’s love of images took hold early. At the age of 12 while photographing in New York City, he already had the presence of mind to ask a thief who demanded his camera to let him take the film out first.

He began to work with wedding and classical photography in New Hampshire while working on the side as a consultant. After a divorce, he looked for a new home, especially one with a fish market, since by now he had taken to photographing posthumous fish.

Fink admits he has no idea why he is drawn to photographing fish. His fish work is reminiscent of the classical style of still-life art, which usually involves portraits of fruit and game meat ornamentally arranged on tables. But that isn’t what first drew him to the subject.

All I can say is there was a splendid connection,” Fink said.

His love of photographing dancers is somewhat more easily traceable. A colleague suggested he photograph dancers for a letterhead design and he immediately fell in love with the subject of dancing. But unlike many photographers, he isn’t as entranced with the finished project of the dancers work, gravity-defying leaps and perfect sculptures of the human form, as he is of the rehearsal process.

There is something about watching dancers work, he said, that “feels like being in a delivery room as children are being born.”

Fink regularly snaps photos at regional dance festivals, and his work can be found on the Bates Dance Festival website. Laura Faure, director of the Bates festival, said Fink won over skeptics with his body of work.

“I have interest from many photographers every year, and I generally say no,” Faure said. But once she saw his photographs of dancers, she changed her mind, and he’s come to the festival for the last four years.

She said the dancers have embraced his presence because he quickly and affordably makes his work available to them. Photos from a day’s dancing at the festival are posted on a wall the very next day.

“It’s kind of fun,” she said. “It’s sort of this living gallery.”

Fink is just one of many artists who call Peaks Island home, said Peg Astarita, a Peaks Island potter and a friend of Fink’s. The island always had a tradition of artists; she estimates that 40 to 50 of the island’s 850-some residents work in the arts.

“You have to wonder sometimes how all these artists ended up on one tiny island,” she said.

In Fink’s case, getting to Peaks Island might be the easiest thing to explain in this article.

“I was in love with this woman and we were getting married,” he said, about his wife, Aaiyn Foster.

She wanted to live on an island, he wanted to live near a city, and Peaks was the perfect compromise, what with its easy commute to Portland and the Harbor Fish Market. Aside from escalating property taxes, the move has worked out well.

But there is one irony about island life that never ceases to amaze Fink: the lack of photographable subject matter suited to his unique tastes.

“You can’t get fish on an island, you have to go to the mainland to get fish,” he said.