Thursday, May 15, 2008

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


14 comments:

NotAnOptimist said...

Murst. Neato.

Anonymous said...

Nice find!

Akubi said...

Given the awful heat wave and high temperatures, I like imagining a life underwater.
I can't stand severely hot weather!

Anonymous said...

I think I dated the girl with the newspaper once upon a time.

Ogg the Caveman said...

Mozert was a photographer as well as a composer? Wow. Who knew?

Anonymous said...

"The Lord of the Dark Matter"

Akubi said...

Elisabeth's jutting hip bone hotel

Akubi said...

"Eighteen percent more food energy is required in many populations where there is a large prevalence of obesity," he said, citing a 460-calorie increase in daily food intake for an obese individual. "There is a clear impact in terms of greenhouse gas emissions in order to grow that food."

Edwards and colleague Ian Roberts wrote in the letter that "more transportation fuel energy will be used to transport the increased mass of the obese population, which will increase even further if, as is likely, the overweight people in response to their increased body mass choose to walk less and drive more."

Anonymous said...

Hillary as Mao: Hillary Clinton: Mao do you do?

Anonymous said...

Akubi,

I hate to sound callous, but if it were up to me there would be no morbid obesity. You want me to go get you a bag of potato chips, a gallon of ice cream, and to change you bedpan? YEAH RIGHT!!

Akubi said...

I hate to sound callous, but if it were up to me there would be no morbid obesity.
How would you go about eliminating morbid obesity?

Anonymous said...

All I'm saying is that if someone is too fat to get out of bed they are SOL as far as I'm concerned. You couldn't pay me enough. I don't know where they find people to take care of the non-ambulatory super-obese, because I sure the hell wouldn't do it.

Akubi said...

I don't know where they find people to take care of the non-ambulatory super-obese, because I sure the hell wouldn't do it.
Well, I don't think the vast majority of people would. Presumably they are seriously dysfunctional households. It's pretty disturbing when people get so fat and immobile that their skin grows over the toilet seat or couch they sit on.

Anonymous said...

Insult to injury department: Taxpayers usually foot the bill.