Submersion: Naturally Brutal and Beautiful

Abstract

As a hunter, I am aware that the majority of societal resources needed for survival are mediated through capitalism. Over the past three years, I have produced a series of self-portraits derived from photographs captured on my spearfishing dives. Driven by the awareness that nature is as brutal as it is beautiful and that hunting is an essential process at every level of the natural food chain, I use large-scale photorealism and vivid colors in an effort to reconnect my audience with the hunt and transfix them within the intricate evolutional details of the animals that we eat. I take inspiration from Paleolithic cave paintings, some of the earliest documented forms of painting that revered the hunt and the animals on which the painters depended. My work is thus a contemporary continuation of this prehistoric painting ritual, honoring the intrinsic relationship between human and animal, hunter and prey.