Wayne Levin’s photos, silver gelatin prints, are strange and luxurious. Shot underwater, they can seem to straddle energetic borders or to have fully crossed a border into another dimension. Capturing a moment in time, they freeze motion, but allow for unlimited appreciation of the shapes enclosed in light, dark and shades of grey — billowing sand, streaking light, a surfer ducking a wave.
Sharing his experiences with an audience at the University of Hawaii-Manoa on Nov. 2, Levin said he began shooting photos of surfers in the ’80s, when very few people were shooting those kinds of images underwater.
Early on, he said, he perceived that when a wave recedes, it creates a “solar line,” as light reflects differently along each side of its path and specifically at its edge. He gravitated to these kinds of borders, ultimately going underwater in remote parts of the ocean and around the world.
“There are always surprises,” he said.
“SUBMERGED”
Underwater photographs by Wayne Levin
>> Where: Treehouse, 675 Auahi St., E3-215
>> When: Through Nov. 26
>> Cost: Free
>> Info: treehouse-shop.com
He describes working in black and white as a “self-imposed limitation that has actually been freeing.” His work, most of it in film and nearly all of it in black and white, reveals the rewards of that process.
In his talk, Levin spoke of water’s “strange disturbances.” His enthusiasm for the resemblances between underwater shapes and other phenomena — for example, “the way approaching waves resembled storm clouds,” is evident in his work.
He continues to shoot photos of seascapes, and underwater animals — “resident spirits” — and sand patterns caused by shifting waters. And he’s intrigued by the behavior of enormous, circling schools of fish, or similarly, flocks of birds, from which he infers that collections of beings can share a consciousness.
Treehouse is showcasing 11 of Levin’s silver gelatin prints, shot on black and white film with a Nikonos underwater camera. Levin’s book “Flowing” (2014) and his first book of underwater imagery, “Through a Liquid Mirror” (1997), are also available at the gallery and photography-oriented shop.
