Scott Campbell: on1breath

In recognition of World Oceans Day, June 8th, this exhibit presents Scott Campbell’s images of marine wildlife.

Freedivers explore the underwater world on a single breath. At its simplest, this sport is an immersion with mystery. To be, see, and feel in a world so vast and unknowable reminds Campbell of how much we don't know, or choose to see, of the oceanic world. He leaves our ordered world of mechanized and social complexity to submerge in an environment no less fraught, no less complex but possessed of a logic and beauty wholly different: where distance and time distort; where amidst the drifting plankton and scattered rays of light blending to infinity everything is writ simple, and clear, and true.

Freediving with a camera alters the dynamic as Campbell gains the senses of a hunter. No longer the irrelevant observer or utterly benign participant, he searches … for a memento, a reminder, a tether … that he can bring back to the surface.