Water Lollipops
“Sensible chaos,“ that’s what 18th century German poet Novalis called water, an indispensable, life-sustaining element of our planet.
Our actions have a huge impact on water, and in turn, water has a huge effect on us. It’s an eternal back-and-forth.
Water can transmit information, just as images can.
It’s the universal element, which we can somewhat master, but which can also master us. (Novalis again).
During this underwater shoot, I gave no instructions to the models.
Not on when they should dive, how deep, or what kind of movements would work for the camera angle. All the shots were executed without any form of verbal or physical communication whatsoever.
Instead it was a search for genuine beauty and spontaneity. Fortunately, we clicked, the magic began to take place, and it seemed as if the models knew exactly what I wanted from them.
I was not working with professional underwater models, and I am not a professional underwater photographer. But the scenario seemed to create itself… even better than I could have created it.
Is it really possible that information can be transmitted through water? I can’t say for sure.
But what I can say is that – from an artistic point of view – the magic happened. And with the help of Carlos Cardiel, a professional diver and artist, we were able to accomplish this dream of an underwater shoot.
Sometimes less is more, and as an artist, you can allow yourself to enter a state of flow, and let the magic of the moment unfold.
synchronicity sidenote
I arrived in Mexico (Tulum) for a holiday in 2017, and felt a strong desire to execute an underwater shoot there.
But I had no equipment, no money, no contacts, and no knowledge of the area. All I had was the desire to seek and capture genuine beauty. My only available tool was my self. Trusting in myself, I did what I did every day : I went for a run along the jungle path. On this day, I discovered I was not alone. At the end of the path, I came upon five Mexican divers, with their pick-up truck. I realised there must be a freshwater sinkhole somewhere nearby.So as I still had the ambition to carry out an underwater shoot, I started to ask them (in my terrible Spanish) where the sinkhole was. They showed me the way, and I took a look, but it was not especially visually interesting – nothing at all like the image above!
So I went back to ask them more questions, and told them of my desire to do an underwater shoot. After a while, one of the men – Carlos Cardiel – released me from my bad Spanish by speaking to me in excellent English, and informed me that these men weren’t just divers, but a specialised police dive unit, and that Carlos was their leader and chief
instructor.
He told me his team usually dived in the sinkholes when they were chasing drug dealers, or when some poor tourist had drowned in one of them.
That wasn’t the kind of thing I was really hoping to hear, my dream seamed to be fading away… but then he added that he had also shot a couple of commercials under water, that he had all the underwater equipment, diving gear and manpower I would need. And that he was interested in my little underwater art project. Even the information that I had no budget did not dim his enthusiasm.
What a surprising turn of events – I was in the right place at the right time, was given the opportunity to make my wish, and it came true.
Synchronicity or not… how gratifying it is when everything comes together so easily.
We shot ”Water Lollipops“ and the underwater sequence of ”Follow Me – Disobey” at the same time.
