What happens when photography meets the ocean?
For the seventh edition of Trigger, we are going underwater. Trigger #7 — Ocean brings together artists, photographers, marine scientists, researchers and writers to explore the ocean not simply as a subject to be photographed, but as an environment, a force and a way of thinking about images.
The book is guest edited by Oceanographies Collective, an interdisciplinary collective founded by Nuria Bofarull and Irene Solé Quevedo (see below). Working with their network and with more than 100 submissions to an open call, we have developed a book that moves between deep waters, midwaters and surface worlds, following four currents: Drift, Turbidity, Trace and Weave.
The result is a book full of different ways of seeing, sensing and thinking with the ocean.
Among the contributors are Mae Lubetkin, Carolin Brendel, Dhia Dhibi, Matthew James Beach and Travis Brandwood, SHOOK Studio, Yvette Monahan, Simone Kessler in collaboration with Cristina Zenato, Marjolijn Dijkman, Sonia Levy, Bianca Baldi in conversation with Miranda Lowe, Hyeongjin Oh, Alice Sharp, Rossella Biscotti, Toby Yuen-Gen Liang and Dionysios Raitsos, Aliki Christoforou, Tao Leigh Goffe, Rosa Lacavalla, Ayasha Guerin, Anna Ridler, Cecilia Sordi Campos, Noor van der Wal, Lucia Rebolino, Anastasía Miseyko, Chiara Indelicato, Bruna Casas and Anna Montraveta Riu, and Fiepke van Niel and Nienke Coers, among others.
Cover design by Hans Gremmen.
Image: Day old Pacific and Atlantic cannonball jellyfishephyrae (baby jellyfish) ready to swim away and find a new home ©Travis Brandwood
Their contributions take us into very different territories. We encounter underwater vision and marine optics, jellyfish and sharks, subsea infrastructures and underwater cables, ports and land reclamation, migration and maritime memory, colonial histories and Indigenous relations, climate change and ecological transformation. Some contributors work directly with seawater and underwater processes; others use photography to trace things that remain hidden beneath the surface.
Photography itself gets wet in this book. Water enters images and texts, shifting and fragmenting them. The history of photography and the sea also turns out to be more entangled than it might first appear: seawater, baths, solutions and washing have been part of photographic processes from the beginning.
At the same time, Ocean asks what photography can make visible when the ocean is understood as a vast network of movements, relations and infrastructures. Shariq Shah's work, for example, follows the transformation of the Maldivian island of Naifaru through massive sand dredging and land reclamation. Michael Twardowski takes us into the science of underwater light and marine life, while Ayasha Guerin approaches shorelines and flood zones through histories of movement, loss and ecological transformation. Tao Leigh Goffe connects ocean histories with the Black Atlantic and the environmental imagination, while Sonia Levy and Bianca Baldi explore the ocean through questions of vision, memory and the photographic image.
The book is designed by Hans Gremmen (Fw:Books, Amsterdam). As with every edition of Trigger, the publication has grown through conversation: between guest editors and contributors, artists and scientists, images and texts, and between the different perspectives brought together in the book.
Many thanks to all the editors / interns / colleagues working with me, and having invested time and care to think along with the ocean: Eline Adriaensen, Mikaela Ariana Christabel, Alicia Cristo, Zeynep Kubat, Lili Kurcz, Anastasia Miseyko, Elena Musetti, Anne Ruygt.
Trigger #7 — Ocean is initiated by FOMU – Museum of Photography Antwerp and will be published in November 2026.
More Ocean to come
The Ocean project continues beyond the printed book. In the months leading up to its publication in November, we will be sharing further contributions, conversations and perspectives through Trigger’s online channels.
This includes work by Francesca Pasotti, Pablo Lima Hernández, Suzette Bousema and Peter Bijl, Alvin Luong, Miyarrka Media, Isabelle Hayeur, Edmar Pineda, Agnès Diaz Castellano and Raquel Sarria, Kasia Molga, Ioanna Sakellaraki and Katalin Száraz Davies. Together, these contributions open up further questions around climate histories, ocean circulation, underwater ecologies, migration, Indigenous relations to the sea, maritime memory and the ocean as a shared legal and political commons.
As we continue working on Ocean, these contributions will unfold one by one and on their own terms, extending the conversations and currents of the book beyond its printed pages.
Meet the guest editors
Oceanographies Collective is a transdisciplinary collective founded by Nuria Bofarull and Irene Solé Quevedo, both originally from Barcelona and shaped by their upbringing on the Mediterranean coast. Their paths crossed through a shared interest in the sea, which later took collective form as Oceanographies after both moved to the Netherlands and began living and working alongside the North Sea. The collective brings together artists, marine and social scientists, mediators and storytellers to explore the ecological, cultural and political dimensions of the ocean, and the relationships between waters, forms of life, maritime routes, infrastructures and oceanic imaginaries.
Irene Solé Quevedo
Nuria Bofarull