La Mode en Mer

“Justice, Liberty and Peace,” by Christy Lee Rogers

I don’t generally cover fashion, although I’ve made exceptions with runway shows in Paris and Honolulu, where the audiences were as much a part of the story. But recently I’ve become intrigued by underwater fashion photography, especially the work of Rafal Makiela, Zena Holloway, Konstantin Killer and Cheryl Walsh. It’s not like anyone sets out to wear a gown in a pool or the ocean, so the very act of producing images means envisioning, fabricating and capturing an imaginary world that nevertheless fleetingly exists. It’s one where the water makes everything seem ethereal, although there are plenty of real-world considerations along way, including makeup, hair, strobes, backscatter (the reflection of suspended particles in the water), how the fabrics will drape and flow, plus a pesky little thing called breathing, which most models seem to enjoy.

All that said, my favorite of the underwater painters—maybe that’s the best way to think of them, since they essentially employ the photographic equivalent of watercolors, even if their style often ends up looking Baroque or Rococo—is Christy Lee Rogers, a Hawaiian who now lives in Nashville, Tenn., and doesn’t actually shoot underwater, but looking down from above and seizing upon the shifting refractions of light. I look at her work, and I think of Tiepolo. And also maybe Rubens.