Daniel Russo is so close to God he can almost smell
his bacon-y breath!
We are transient beings, on this earth for but a few all
too short moments. And then we turn to dust. We scratch
and feel immortal, at times, yet really, we are dust.
But water photography? Water photography is
forever.
Photographs, unlike us, are truly immortal. They live on through
the eons whether sepia-toned, black and white, color or
high-definition color. They live in drawers and boxes and cell
phones and computers and the internet. Aboriginal peoples on
different continents often believe that photographs capture the
soul. They are derided as backward. Unsophisticated. Curly headed
naïve children (or straight headed in the Americas).
But they are right. Photographs capture the soul and lock it
into celluloid or megabyte where it lives eternally. Captured. And
how much more eternal are water photographs? That much more.
There is, first, the black arts used to bring the camera into
water. Saltwater is a damaging agent. The most damaging naturally
occurring agent on earth save hot lava. It rusts and corrodes.
Cameras are born delicate. Small, sensitive metal pieces. Glass
that can scratch and shatter. And so to keep the camera from being
destroyed, on contact, by saltwater the magician must cast a spell
over it. He must conjure the spirits of silicone and plastic and
rubber. He must create valves.
The camera, in its housing, in the saltwater, is an aberration
of an aberration. Something otherworldly. And as the magician swims
out to sea with his creation and can capture souls out at sea and
does capture souls he is also an aberration. A collector. And he
collects souls riding waves.
And there is, second, the even more transient existence of
waves. If the human life is over in the blink of an eye, the life
of a wave is then over in the flutter of an eyelash. Waves, even
the longest rights at Jeffreys Bay, never last long enough. And
they are never repeated. Once they pass they are gone forever and
no memory is good enough to hold the feeling or even really the
image of a wave. Waves defy containment. They laugh at the
addiction created in us. They laugh as we forever chase a
feeling.
As we look at a picture of Nathan Florence, say, grinding
through a perfect barrel we can put ourselves, right there. We can
imagine how it feels. How racing toward the almond eye, foamball
nipping at heels, tastes. The water photograph brings all of us
there together. It brings us to a moment which passed, like the
flutter of an eyelash, and we can live in it forever. Or until we
turn to dust.
But the camera, in its housing, does contain waves and
furthermore it can contain the feeling. We look at pictures and we
stare at them and we sear them into our hippocampi and we remember
our own experiences. Which is, third, the transportational quality
of a water photograph. It takes us into our own memory, back in
time, but it can also take us into someone else’s memory. I, nor
most of the friends I am lucky to call my own (save the
professional surfers I am lucky to call my own) have ever surfed
heaving Teahupoo, or any Teahupoo for that matter, but I, and most
of my dear friends, have surfed large, sucking lefts at one point
or another.
And as we look at a picture of Nathan Florence, say,
grinding through a perfect barrel we can put ourselves, right
there. We can imagine how it feels. How racing toward the almond
eye, foamball nipping at heels, tastes. The water photograph brings
all of us there together. It brings us to a moment which passed,
like the flutter of an eyelash, and we can live in it forever. Or
until we turn to dust.
The surf shot captured from land or boat is wonderful. It is
pleasant and fun and artistic. Amazing. But the surf shot captured
from water is beyond all. It is, again, magic. Maybe an evil magic.
Maybe something that should never be captured, but life is too
short to care and, anyhow, it is not me being captured. It is not
my soul. It is the professional surfer’s. The best ones doing the
best things on the best waves in the best light (and proper shutter
speed etc.) during the best of their youth.
“How sad it is!” they can crow. “I shall grow old, and horrible,
and dreadful. My body will give out and I will no longer be able to
send plumes of spray into the ether with strong thighs and a
stronger back. But these pictures, these water photographs, will
remain always young. They will never be older than the day they
were taken. If only it were the other way! If it were I who was to
be always young, and strong, and able to frontside slob, and the
picture was to grow old. For that, for that, I would give
everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not
give! I would give my soul for that!”
But in truth, they already have given their soul. They have
given it to me and to my friends and to you and to every other man,
woman, child who casually flips open a surf magazine, or coffee
table book and gazes. And the surfer is right to despise this fact.
The ugly and stupid and those who cannot even frontside hack
without swinging their arms like epileptics have the best of it in
this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. At the
surf videos. At the water photographs. They can surf Teahupoo
forever as they gape. The surfer who is in the photograph, though,
will grow old and he will feel the gnaw and he can crow, “How sad
it is!”
The surfer is right to despise but he should not ponder his fate
for long, however. Beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual
expression begins. So he should succumb to his fate. He is blessed
and, at the same time, cursed. He should accept this and let it go
and he should certainly not despise the water photographer. The
magician capturing his soul in a moment of rapture. If he is
mature, his unreal and selfish love could yield to some higher
influence, could be transformed into some nobler passion and the
image that Daniel Russo has created of him might be a guide to him
through life, would be to him what holiness is to some, and
conscience to others, and the fear of God to us all. There are
opiates for remorse, drugs that can lull the moral sense to sleep.
But here, on surf magazine page, or coffee table book, is a visible
symbol of the degradation of sin. An ever-present sign of the ruin
men bring upon their souls. The sin of desiring immortality and the
sin of desiring one moment frozen in time.
But, and again, it is not the surfer’s fault. He is blessed and,
at the same time, cursed. And not only should he not despise the
water photographer, he should love him. For if Daniel Russo can
give surfed-out ecstasy, a giant day at Teahupoo, a perfect barrel
ridden with style and ease, to those who have lived without, if
they can create a sense of beauty in people whose lives have been
sordid and ugly, who cannot even slip into a backside closeout
without hunching over like an ape, than they are worthy of
adoration. Worthy of the adoration of the world.
I shared my theories on water photography with a famous
professional surfer and with a famous professional water
photographer about the capturing of the soul and the curses and the
blessings and the despising. About the sin of desiring immortality
and about the sordid and ugly who benefit from the images. About
how beautiful those images are and about how damning they are.
The famous professional surfer looked at me, long, and he
lowered his glasses (he wears glasses) and he said, “You have
killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don’t even
stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you
because you were marvellous, because you had genius and intellect,
because you realised the dreams of great poets and gave shape and
substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away with
this theory. You are shallow and stupid.”
I went home to cry but found myself staring at a picture of
Julian Wilson shattering the back of a wave at Keramas. The water
photographer, I know not which water photographer, had set himself
behind the wave and everything was visible. So much power in the
turn. So many fins above the lip. So much water being flung in all
directions. And I felt better.
I felt magical.
