You know you’ve got a world-class exhibition on your hands when you share a building with none other than James Cameron, who recently held a seminar at the end of his exhibition in Sydney’s Australian National Maritime Museum as part of the Sydney Festival. The Ocean Photographer of the Year Exhibition, the collection of photos in the gallery next door to Cameron’s, enthralling viewers there since November last year (and continuing until 27 April), has now come to Melbourne at Williamstown’s Seaworks maritime precinct.
This reviewer has been raised on nature photography, from the luscious images in David Attenborough’s books, to Australian Ken Duncan and Englishman Steve Parish, right up to contemporaries such as Ami Vitale and her associated organisation Vital Impacts. So expectations were high.
However, this show, hosted by Oceanograpic and the Ocean Photographer of the Year (OPY) is as grand and visually exhilarating as one could hope, and Rafael Fernandez Caballero’s arresting shot of a whale seconds before gulping a cluster of fish is a deserved winner.
Other highlights are Andrey Shpatak’s dynamic octopus, Mark Williams’ exhaling orca and Tobias Friedrich’s beautifully compositioned shipwreck. Striking composition is a recurring strength in this whole gallery – in practically every image, every element is in exactly the right place for both aesthetics and impact. Each photo comes with a passage written by the photographer and, for the enthusiast, technical specifications of the equipment used.
The gallery is divided into multiple categories, showing the first, second and third place winners of them, along with a collection of highly commended entries. Some categories involve nature, others feature humans and some reveal the symbiotic relationships between them, ranging from mutualism to commensalism to just plain parasitism.
And this is where the exhibition, as with many nature-oriented shows, including latter-day Attenborough series, becomes somewhat of an ethical and aesthetic tug-of-war. Is this a celebration of nature’s beauty, or a condemnation of humanity’s destruction of it? Is it a heartwarming portrait of human’s coexistence with our marine neighbours or a damning report of our exploitation of, and apathy towards them? Alas, in the world at the moment, the answer is all of the above.
Shows like this one, consisting of such undeniably professional photos, serve to both put nature on a pedestal and also slap the viewer in the face with contradictory images featuring both artistic merit and moral guilt.
These interwoven feelings are very much encapsulated in the third place overall winning photo by Thien Nguyen Ngoc – it’s a visually spectacular overhead shot of an anchovy fishing boat in Vietnam, but once you realise the boat is completely surrounded by nets the only function of which is to take as much from the ocean as possible, you’re left with a photo that’s beautiful to the eye, but confusing to the conscience. Like many others in the gallery, this photo proves how many ideas and feelings can be communicated with a single image.
Read: Exhibition review: Re-Stor(y)ing Oceania, Artspace Sydney
And this notion of storytelling is well expressed by Jade Hoksbergen, winner of overall second place, whose photo comes with a quote saying that her photos aim to tell stories, because “we can’t love something without a face, and we can’t care about something we don’t know”. In this way, this entire exhibition is not just strikingly beautiful, but is also important in these days of consumer desensitisation. For example, Ngoc’s photo reminds us that anchovies come from trawlers in places like Vietnam and not just from a tin at the supermarket.
With over 100 photos over many categories, this exhibition comes very highly recommended.
Ocean Photographer of the Year Exhibition
Seaworks Williamstown
Tickets: $15-$20
Ocean Photographer of the Year Exhibition will be on display until 13 July 2025.
