We’re off to unexplored, often little-known worlds with the French photographer and professional diver, who has devoted his life to capturing the fragility, strength and beauty of the deep.
The Valley of a Thousand Roses, a vast, untouched coral reef in Polynesia that Alexis Rosenfeld and his teams have measured and explored. Alexis Rosenfeld
Since learning to dive at a young age, Alexis Rosenfeld has constantly invented projects to spend as much time as possible in the water, capturing images as fascinating and magnetic as the underwater world itself. His latest project: « 1Ocean, » a foundation created in 2021 under the auspices of UNESCO, which has made him a key witness of the ocean depths. Over the course of a decade, this project takes him across the world’s seas and oceans—from the Pacific to the Mediterranean, including the Coral Sea—for photographic and scientific expeditions, with the goal of documenting the ocean floor to better protect it.
A child of Jules Verne and a disciple of Captain Cousteau, Alexis Rosenfeld travels the blue planet with a resolutely optimistic, enchanted, and committed perspective. In his images, through his blue eyes, the multicolored corals and gorgonians appear magical, schools of fish dance with the sea, and light plays reveal deep, magical underwater forests that seem straight out of childhood dreams…
But for Alexis Rosenfeld, the sea is much more than just a backdrop for beautiful images. It is a living archive of the past, a mirror of his own quest; a quest for beauty, mysteries, and perhaps answers in an era completely disoriented, even 200 meters deep. His documentary approach now aims to serve science and raise awareness about the alarming, often invisible, and even unconsidered state of the oceans, the first victims of the ongoing climate upheavals.
« Making the invisible visible, exploring the unexplored » is his credo, fully aware that while 20% of the ocean has been mapped, only 5% has been explored so far. There is so much more to do, to discover… and to protect!
Source: RFI
