Charli Anderson

Pearl Diver distorts and abstracts familiar presences like the ocean, the moon and the tide it controls through the hands of a single pearl diver partly inspired by Japanese Ama. Everything is meant to be psychological rather than literal as symbols are examined and distorted in different contexts. 

 

This carries through the technical choices that went into this series as well. A combination of long exposure, stroboscopic flash and double exposure give form to different identity frameworks and approaches to self discovery. The emphasis was long extensions of time captured in single frames in camera, with minimal post-production or compositing as a way to let moments expand and be imperfect, as if shaped by memory and personal beliefs. 

 

This series is based on my earliest memory: nearly drowning after falling into the ocean at night when I was three. I remember it as vividly today as I did when it happened. The left side of my vision was completely black and the right was frothing water, and I remembered being worried about crocodiles and a feeling of fighting tipping into the black side. It felt like an underwater waterfall over a cliff I knew not to go over. I don't remember surfacing, but the coughing hurt so badly I wished I hadn't come up at all. My father tells me that he jumped into the water after me and he panicked because he couldn't see anything. He felt the faintest brush against his leg, grabbed it, and luckily enough, it was me. 

 

Above all, the fundamental question of the series is simply: What do you bring back from your waters?