Living like a Fish

He likes to say that he "took to photography like a duck takes to water." But "like a fish" might be closer to the mark. At Silver Springs, Mozert pioneered underwater photography, building waterproof housings that allowed him to go deep with a camera in hand. For some 45 years (except for service with the Army Air Forces during World War II), he created scenes of people—comely young women, for the most part—talking on the phone, playing golf, reading the newspaper...underwater, all the better to show off the wondrous clarity of Silver Springs' waters.


"Everything has a picture in it, a sellable picture," Mozert says. "All you got to do is use your imagination." To create bubbles in a champagne flute, he would stick some dry ice or Alka-Seltzer in the glass; to simulate smoke rising from a grill, he used canned condensed milk. "The fat in the milk would cause it to rise, creating ‘smoke' for a long time," he says. With his meticulous production values and surreal vision, Mozert cast Silver Springs in a light perfectly suited to postwar America—part "Leave It to Beaver" and part "The Twilight Zone." His images anchored a national publicity campaign for the springs from the 1940s through the '70s; competing against water-skiing shows, dancing porpoises, leaping whales and hungry alligators, Silver Springs remained one of Florida's premier attractions, the Disney World of its day. Then, in 1971, came Disney World.



The Life Aquatic with Bruce Mozert via otomano