Project Statement

Last year I was visiting a friend who is an avid surfer. His home has many coffee table books about the glamorous culture of surfing. While I was looking through some of these books, I wondered why there was no equivalent genre of books for SCUBA diving. There are many books and websites devoted to underwater SCUBA photography. I am not aware of very many books or websites devoted to above-water, or topside, SCUBA photography.

Surfing has many books, movies, websites, and entire museums devoted to their culture. There are even surfing comic strips as well as an entire genre of music related to surfing. But there is very little material dedicated to the SCUBA culture. The culture of recreational diving is only included as a secondary element in the entertainment media and historical references. I was an avid photographer when I took my open water certification course back in 1989, but I don't have any photographs of that course. Nobody else took any photographs back then because digital photography wasn't available, and nobody was interested in shooting film of dozens of divers clambering around San Carlos Beach (Breakwater) near Monterey.

Although surfing may be more glamorous than SCUBA diving, there are many similarities between the surfing culture and the SCUBA diving culture. Each has their own history, participants, locations, fashions, equipment, language, rituals and rules of conduct. The surfing culture is already thoroughly documented in photography. My goal in this project is to create a photo documentation of the above-water side of the SCUBA culture over the next ten years. Someday, way into the future when SCUBA is replaced by high-tech personal gills, this project may become a historical record of changing equipment styles and trends within the diving industry.

Biography

I have been actively photographing for over thirty years. For the past eight years I have been focused on photographing abandoned buildings and the natural landscape at night, usually under a full moon. My work has been exhibited at various venues and shows around San Francisco and San Jose, CA.

Andy Frazer