Cook and Jenshel, wife and husband, work together on large projects, she in black and white, he in color. Turning to water after a project about volcanoes, they settled on two approaches, one concerned with ice, the other with immense aquariums--hence, one with pure nature, the other with nature humanly constrained. Their aquarium pictures are gorgeous, thoughtful, and provocative. At first the black-and-whites seem more artificial and abstract, especially in the subtly turbulent image of a tiger plunging after a pumpkin, which is virtually impossible to decipher without a written explanation. But it is almost as hard to "decode" the adjacent color image of a spotlighted shark lunging toward the viewer. Other color pictures are forthrightly painterly: illuminist (a redheaded woman watches identically red jellyfish), magical realist (a baby and a turtle in a seeming face-off), and, of course, surrealist (the giant fish-nose "invading" a sunken classical Greek city). Biologist Todd Newberry's essay and the interview-afterword raise piquant questions about the aquarium experience for inhabitants as well as spectators.
Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"Their photographs and Aquarium as a whole operate in multiple levels simultaneously: as nature studies, as mediated experiences of an alien environment, as cross-species theater, as explorations of what the photographers refer to as 'packaged nature' and, ultimately, as fascinating exercises in human perception and consciousness." -- Edgar Allen Beem --Photo District News
"Photographers Diane Cook and Len Jenshel call it a fantasy world. In color and in black-and-white images, they capture--often from a fish's-eye view--both the creepiness and the thrill of the aquarium." --House & Garden
"Spectacular and witty scenes from aquariums, taken by a husband-and-wife team. Jenshel's bright color pictures are best when they capture the fantasy and absurdity inherent in the aquarium experience. In one, a wan blonde in a shimmery mermaid costume skids under the surface of improbably blue water; in another, a blandly dressed couple is reflected in the wall of a tank that is aglow with anemones and sea urchins. Cook's slightly furry, quietly mysterious black-and-white photographs focus on the sea creatures in their unnatural environments--goggle-eyed flounders, as still and gray and startling as a bas-relief; a shark, its head craning toward the surface; and, best of all, in a three-panel image, a fleet of jellyfish who seem to plummet through the water's silvery depths like parachutes." --The New Yorker
"The more than 70 photographs collected here (Cook's black and whites are compellingly paired with Jenshel's color shots) depict amazing creatures in perfect moments: embracing octopuses, schooling sea nettles, a killer whale kissing the surface. Most mesmerizing of all, though, are the frozen gazes of visitors losing themselves in these man-made underworlds." -- Kalee Thompson --National Geographic Adventure Magazine
