My underwater photography
is an outgrowth of my love of the ocean and the plants and animals
that live in it. For as long as I can remember, I have loved colors,
and the sea is rich with them in every imaginable form and combination.
Colors I would never wear I collect nonetheless, thereby expressing
my hidden needs. Like a bower bird, I select flower petals and
beetle wings for my nest. For My Lady.
At the heart of the matter, my photographs express a love affair
with our existence. If I depict Earthly creatures, to me they
come from afar. For they have a srangeness, alien as from another
planet. Only my relationshp gives them a familiar humanity. Of
"airy nothing" a moon jelly pulses through a dark sea,
hauntingly like the Earth in space. Every photograph of our planet
awakens in me memories of a jellyfish in the sea.
When confronting creatures we consider wild, it is not our right
to destroy them out of fear. We should not obliterate them from
the Earth because they occasionally inconvenience us. All we pave
over is our living heritage. All we destroy is the diversity of
our lives. What we capture for our zoos, aquariums, and bookshelves
is jailed or murdered. For a time, we may not miss what we destroy.
We have duplicated so much of the world in our arts. In our polluted
cities, our creations serve as momentary diversions. But the living
colors and butterflies dance beyond ladies' dresses. They become
lifeless when embalmed as paperweights. No marble lioness can
replace the lithe machinery of her muscle, flowing through the
golden grasses before the rush.
Photography and cinema may show us what is too small, too quick,
too far away for our eyes, but how will our creations satisfy
us when what they depict is gone? By lamp or sunlight, they are
most beautiful when their flanks, and wings, and paws, and their
eyes are alert.
If any of my photographs breathe for you, I have accomplished
all that I would ask of any artist. My images only hint at the
richness that I have lived. In viewing these pages, you may wish
to eliminate a creature who frightens or repulses you. One with
whom you care not to socialize, however briefly. Someone I love.
Some creature, or creatures who have enriched my life beyond explanations
and definitions, beyond mechanics, equipment and everything taught
in schools, and my wildest imaginings as a young boy. Much in
human society moves me toward old age. Before the wonder of other
beings, I am young. -- Douglas Faulkner
These photos were
taken over a thirty year period, between 1962 and 1992. Faulkner
stopped photographing marine life after companies discontinued
the manufacturing of flash bulbs. "It was an unwilling act,
but I was not happy with the quality of light from electronic
strobes," explained Faulkner, who went on to photograph manatees
and underwater nudes with existing light.
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