Paul Blackmore captures the experience of being immersed in water; of diving beneath a wave and swimming towards the surface; the sensation of the water on our skin; the shock and cool of this otherworldly realm; the thrill of stretching our senses into the deep.

‘For me’, he says, ‘the act of immersing myself into the enormity of the ocean is like a secular baptism; a cleansing of the mind and body’. We become small within something so much larger than us, we are challenged and renewed.

In these images of young people under and near the water’s surface, Blackmore conveys the magic of this special experience: the stretched moments between one breath and another; the journey from childhood to adulthood; and the ‘quiet noise’ of the aquatic world, which we seem to hear from within our body. Swimming in the ocean, we are vulnerable, aware we are in a separate space all our own.