Aquarium - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1931788219 ISBN 13: 9781931788212

Publisher: Aperture, 2003

Synopsis

Why do a million people a year visit the tiny seacoast town of Newport, Oregon, whose population is only 8,400? It isn't the beautiful beaches or the quaint fishing harbor, it's the Oregon Coast Aquarium. In cities large and small around the world, recent innovations in aquarium design have transformed what were once damp, stodgy science displays into lively and exciting introductions to the fascinating undersea world.

Attracted by the new spectacles offered to aquarium visitors, Diane Cook and Len Jenshel have traveled around the world photographing these dramatic environments and their enthralled audiences. Fifteen aquariums in North America, five in Europe, five in the Caribbean (including three in Cuba), and three in Japan are included.

Seventy photographs, half in color and half in black-and-white, are accompanied by an interview with the photographers by Lawrence Wechsler, the much-honored New Yorker writer.

About this title

About the Author

Len Jenshel and Diane Cook are among America’s foremost landscape photographers. Fascinated by the spectacles offered to aquarium visitors, they have traveled around the world photographing these dramatic environments and their enthralled audiences. Fifteen aquariums in North America, five in Europe, five in the Caribbean (including three in Cuba), and three in Japan are included.

Review

"Their photographs and Aquarium as a whole operate in multiple levels simultaneously: as nature studies, as mediated experiences of an alien environment, as cross-species theater, as explorations of what the photographers refer to as 'packaged nature' and, ultimately, as fascinating exercises in human perception and consciousness." -- Edgar Allen Beem --Photo District News

"Photographers Diane Cook and Len Jenshel call it a fantasy world. In color and in black-and-white images, they capture--often from a fish's-eye view--both the creepiness and the thrill of the aquarium." --House & Garden

"Spectacular and witty scenes from aquariums, taken by a husband-and-wife team. Jenshel's bright color pictures are best when they capture the fantasy and absurdity inherent in the aquarium experience. In one, a wan blonde in a shimmery mermaid costume skids under the surface of improbably blue water; in another, a blandly dressed couple is reflected in the wall of a tank that is aglow with anemones and sea urchins. Cook's slightly furry, quietly mysterious black-and-white photographs focus on the sea creatures in their unnatural environments--goggle-eyed flounders, as still and gray and startling as a bas-relief; a shark, its head craning toward the surface; and, best of all, in a three-panel image, a fleet of jellyfish who seem to plummet through the water's silvery depths like parachutes." --The New Yorker

"The more than 70 photographs collected here (Cook's black and whites are compellingly paired with Jenshel's color shots) depict amazing creatures in perfect moments: embracing octopuses, schooling sea nettles, a killer whale kissing the surface. Most mesmerizing of all, though, are the frozen gazes of visitors losing themselves in these man-made underworlds." -- Kalee Thompson --National Geographic Adventure Magazine

About this edition

• Publisher: Aperture
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1931788219
• ISBN 13: 9781931788212
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 120