Wayne Levin

Over the past thirty years, I’ve been working on Through a Liquid Mirror,  a series of photographs about the ocean. I’ve shot shipwrecks, aquatic animals, seascapes, and people underwater. Lately, I’ve been particularly fascinated with Akule, a fish that forms extremely large and coordinated schools, creating amazing shapes.

So when I was asked to shoot Vanessa, a personal trainer, it seemed like a unique opportunity to combine the mission of Showing with my own body of work. Vanessa was in the midst of training a young woman for a triathlon—one third of which is the open-water swim.

Wayne is an American photographer based in Honolulu, HI.

We went out to Hanauma Bay, on the island of Oahu. It was the most protected place I knew, somewhere where we could expect to have reasonably clear water. We had to swim out beyond the reef to a calmer area. When we got there, I told the subjects to swim toward me, and I dove down as they swam over me.

For me, it was amazing to see this woman—8 months pregnant—confidently swimming in the open ocean. The physicality of it was inspiring. It changed the way I think about the physical limitations of pregnancy.

In fact, several years later, my cousin visited Hawaii when she was 8 months pregnant. She wanted to go for a swim, so I took her out to Honaunau Bay, in Kona, where I lived. To make a long story short, we ended up surrounded by a school of dolphins. They formed a tight circle around us and started making clicking noises. I realized later that they were actually echolocating her fetus.

Just my luck: I didn't have my camera that time.