thePULSEBy Jennifer Russo
Nobel Prize winner Andre Gide once said that “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” Though his words were meant to apply to life in general, National Geographic underwater photographer Brian Skerry, who was born in Milford, raised in Uxbridge, and then earned his Bachelor of Arts in media and communications from Worcester State College, applies them quite literally to his everyday profession. With his camera, Brian captures the mysteries of the deep and discloses its secrets. The Earth is made up of over 70% water, an aquatic world of beauty, life and history, a world of strange and wonderful things that breathe far below the surface of our human world. The ocean is a storybook largely unread and Brian Skerry is our narrator.
After attending a divers’ conference when he was 17, Skerry knew that his life’s path led directly into the water. Because this was an expensive road to travel, he worked on charter boats to pay for local projects and focused on area shipwrecks. He wrote stories and sold them to magazines until his break came in 1998. A veteran photographer for National Geographic handed him an almost impossible shipwreck story that he wasn’t interested in doing ~ one with a 98% chance of failure, poor conditions and no visibility. Brian was able to capture some great photos on this dive, and National Geographic hired him based on that shoot.
Since then, Brian has spent over 10,000 hours underwater photographing images that not only reveal the ocean’s amazing beauty and wildlife, but capture our interactions with it. Sometimes, these images are of a stunning, jaw-dropping experience, like a right whale face-to-face on the ocean floor with Brian’s assistant. Brian tells me that it “…received a lot of attention and has really struck a chord with people ~ it’s as if they are in conversation. The whale chose to interact with us that day. It let us into its world so to speak.”
Other times, his images bring to light the tragic truths of man violating this beauty for gain, as is the case with Brian’s project on the Global Fisheries crisis and the result of overfishing. About his iconic photo of a shark caught in the fishermen’s net, Skerry shares, “It resembles a crucifixion ~ it was so powerful that it has been used in other places besides the magazine including a slideshow that was done in Chili. Shark finning became banned as a result of that presentation in that country.
When I asked him how he separates himself from these situations in order to capture these images, he told me that “I’d like to think that I do separate myself a bit when I am looking through the view finder because I want to get the best picture that tells the true story, but there’s the time you process it later ~ whether it be that night or after you come home. You can’t completely detach, so some degree of emotion plays into how I may frame the photo to best resonate with the readers. I believe human beings are mostly visual creatures. The most poignant moments are in a still frame. This is how we view history. I have tried to put my effort into the conservation movement because although we love beautiful wildlife shots, we won’t know there is a problem unless someone shows it to us. I want to give people a complete picture.”
Locally, Brian is working on a project with the Conservation Law Foundation in Massachusetts to create a visual library of New England’s waters. “New England has some of the richest waters on the planet. I look forward to returning to home waters and making the finest pictures I can to help preserve it,” he says.
Brian’s beautiful work can be seen on his official website: www.BrianSkerry.com. His latest book, Ocean Soul, can be purchased in his store. You can also find out more about Brian on the National Geographic website: www.nationalgeographic.com
