Submerged
Submerged
I have worked with the figure and water for years with an old Nikonos 35mm film camera. This past summer, while in residency at Ondarte, I finally made the switch to digital. My new apparatus was effective in terms of keeping the water off my camera, but I found it difficult to use the viewfinder. As my framing became more random, I found that getting the camera at an angle where the reflections in the water was as important as the figure gave the images a new sense of abstraction.
Being underwater is a state of buoyancy, fluidity and weightlessness. Unlike the open sea, water in a pool offers an ambiguous spatial depth with a color range from indigo to cerulean. The figures in these images emerge from the blue field surrounded by fabric and tulle. The color blue is a mindset for me, it speaks of desire, daydreams, blue gestures and blue thoughts. In this state of being submerged, we are brought to a place of sensory awareness and uncertain reality. Color, reflections and the confusion of materials and figure produce a world both mysterious and defined by light.
The images were made in various pools in Akumal Mexico and Dallas Texas. I use a high resolution digital camera in a special underwater housing. The finished images are ‘straight’, unmanipulated photographs.
The photographs are produced as archival pigment prints on Hahnemuhle William Turner paper, in limited editions.
Kenda North
Dallas, Texas
I have worked with the figure and water for years with an old Nikonos 35mm film camera. This past summer, while in residency at Ondarte, I finally made the switch to digital. My new apparatus was effective in terms of keeping the water off my camera, but I found it difficult to use the viewfinder. As my framing became more random, I found that getting the camera at an angle where the reflections in the water was as important as the figure gave the images a new sense of abstraction.
Being underwater is a state of buoyancy, fluidity and weightlessness. Unlike the open sea, water in a pool offers an ambiguous spatial depth with a color range from indigo to cerulean. The figures in these images emerge from the blue field surrounded by fabric and tulle. The color blue is a mindset for me, it speaks of desire, daydreams, blue gestures and blue thoughts. In this state of being submerged, we are brought to a place of sensory awareness and uncertain reality. Color, reflections and the confusion of materials and figure produce a world both mysterious and defined by light.
The images were made in various pools in Akumal Mexico and Dallas Texas. I use a high resolution digital camera in a special underwater housing. The finished images are ‘straight’, unmanipulated photographs.
The photographs are produced as archival pigment prints on Hahnemuhle William Turner paper, in limited editions.
Kenda North
Dallas, Texas
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