"Photos in a bathing suit": Fathers and children in the pool

EVERY DAY PHOTOGRAPHERS AROUND THE WORLD looking for new ways to tell stories or to capture what we previously did not notice. We choose interesting photo projects and ask their authors what they wanted to say. This week we are publishing a series of "Water # 2" by Dutch photographer Alex ten Napel, in which he explored family relationships and shot fathers with their children in water - an environment as alien as possible to everyday life and emphasizing all emotions.

This project started from afar - in 2005. Then I began to shoot the Dutch, to capture the formation of a multicultural society in their homeland. I shot women and men, young and old, fat and thin, all existing skin colors - and all in the water in the same pose. Almost naked people in bathing suits seemed completely taken out of their usual context. They became just human beings in the natural environment and in perfect harmony with water. This project was first presented at the Epson Photo Festival in May 2005.

Soon after, I launched the second part of the project, for which I wanted to have children - including babies. I asked their mothers to keep them in the water, also getting into the frame. But most of them refused, because they didn’t like being taken in a bathing suit, although they wanted to get unique portraits of their favorite babies. They were torn apart by contradictions: on the one hand, they thought about themselves, on the other - about children. How to solve this problem, I thought. And then the fathers came to the rescue. How can a father refuse a mother to his child? Fortunately, most of them agreed to pose for the project. When I saw the test polaroids, I was shocked - everything turned out even better than I had planned, and so the project entered the third stage.

I have two children myself, so I am well aware of the nature of the relationship between a father and his child. And as a photographer I wanted to show her in these portraits. After the first tests, I began to observe how fathers behave with their children in the pool: not so many places allow you to take a good look at how they interact, and here they were completely relaxed and in complete harmony with themselves.

Sometimes it seemed as if they were physically connected and transformed into a single whole. Perhaps in this way the fathers tried to recreate the physical connection that exists between the mother and the child during pregnancy. From this point of view, the pool is a great environment for diving in every sense. Fathers, metaphorically exposed, become as close to children as a mother, and this creates a very special feeling. Water itself also serves as an excellent conductor. The way it envelops your body, relaxes you and allows you to plunge into the world of their fantasies. Water as if washes away all everyday cares and breaks the connection with reality, you become a different person in this environment.

I am very interested in human emotions and experiences, and how they are reflected on the faces - my work helps to pull them into the light, this is the essence of my art. To capture the elusive, elusive moment and immortalize it - in this I see my task as an artist. What you see in front of you are portraits of two or more human beings. And this is the story of their relationship.