The water column is a concept in oceanography used to describe the physical and chemical characteristics of seawater at different depths. Covering roughly 71% of the earth’s surface with an average depth of 4km, the water column is the largest habitat for wildlife on the planet. In spite of this, only 5% of the ocean has been explored and charted.

Over the course of three years, Taiyo Onorato an Nico Krebs worked with scientific researchers and in the depths of the Red Sea to produce Water Columns, published by Edition Patrick Frey. These images they produced oscillate between abstraction and representation, documentary and fantasy. The viewer’s perception is twisted and distorted. What must be a composite photograph seems to depict a diver swimming alongside octopus-like creatures almost twice their size. An image of what appears to be a giant metal club sandwich encrusted in oceanic plants shrinks when shown in the context of the vitrine in which it is examined in a lab. 

Together the artists use the photographic medium as both a tool of scientific research and speculation. Throughout the book, photographs are accompanied by texts written by the novelist Ingo Niermann where the protagonist describes what sounds like the experience of drowning. In the context of rising sea levels, Niermann’s text starts to feel less like fiction and more like fact: a message in a bottle forewarning of a coming underwater apocalypse. Jackson Mount