Meet Enric Gener, the sea photographer behind our beautiful underwater campaign.
Our admiration for the work of Enric Gener of 27mm is pure connection since we discovered it.
We dive a little deeper into his passion for the ocean with this interview.
NT- When does your relationship with the sea begin in photography? Were you a photographer before and did you specialize in underwater photo or was it the other way?
EG- My relationship with the sea starts from the day I was born. First, because this happened on a small island in the Mediterranean. And second to have a father passionate of the sea. These made me soak up the sea, its sensations, its stories, its teachings. I compare it with learning a language since being a baby. Everything that happens to you as a child is absorbed in a much more intense and natural way, but without realizing it.
The photography came a lot later, already at the university. But anyway, it was not until several years later, that I merged these two worlds.
How is your work method? Do you always dive in apnea? How important is this skill for capturing better underwater images? Do you have to train for it?
My work method is surprisingly simple. It’s just about going to the sea to have fun, with my partner or with friends. Sometimes only a while at sunset, others the whole the day at the beach looking for new spots or spending several days at sea with a small boat.
I dive most of the time in apnea. I used to scuba dive, but not anymore due to its complexity, noise and little solitude.
Holding your breath underwater is the key to making good photos, but everyone can do it. What happens is that under the water, the mind takes over and makes us believe that we can not be there for long.
Normally underwater photography focuses on portraying the rarest species, but your images seem pictorial. What inspires you to capture?
I like to see my work is an iconography of my relationship with the sea. Formally, I try to be simple and clean, without filling the frame with too many elements. I try to take the essential elements that push you to live the experience of being underwater in the same landscapes and situations that I have been. But I do not want you to see the same places, I just want you to feel the same things.
The sea is another world, just one step away from our daily lives. Down there begins a path to the deep, the cold, the dark, the humid and the blurred. Where you are in constant motion and if that is not enough, you can not breathe. And suddenly a human being appears, apparently out of context, but at the same time capable of being closely connected with that infinite blue space.
La Isla, NOW_THEN by Enric Gener, 27mm.
What can we find in your suitcase? Do you always work with the same equipment?
I almost always work with the same equipment. A Canon 5D MarkII and a 16-35mm lens. And this enclosed with a SeaCam aluminum case. No flash, in recent years I’ve only been shooting with natural light. This is my day-to-day equipment along with my mask, breathing tube and, not always, fins.
We see that you are always traveling the world. What destiny has been for you more special and what is on your wish list?
I have a good memory of almost all, but especially of Tonga in 2012, swimming with the humpback whales, although it is a place think I will not return, because tourism has gone a little mad in what was an amazing natural park. I would love to go to the Antarctica, but I’m sure it will be very bad for the weather. I do not like the cold at all!
La Isla, NOW_THEN by Enric Gener, 27mm.
We understand that in the sea you can not prepare everything as in a set where you even reproduce the light artificially. As in the practice of water sports, do you depend on the conditions of the sea? How is this in the sense that things come out as you expect?
Here the advantage is that there is a high sense of improvisation in everything I do. I rarely go into the water with a fixed idea. My starting point is more the one of a documentalist, someone who faces to analyze a place and get the best out of it. Although the final image is more aesthetic than realistic.
La Isla, NOW_THEN by Enric Gener, 27mm.
Discover more about the work of Enric Gener at www.27mm.net
