A WOMAN is immortalised, gazing at her phone, part of an anonymous crowd of sculptures by British artist Jason deCaires Taylor. But this is no ordinary setting: deCaires Taylor鈥檚 pH-neutral marine cement figures (above) are 14 metres underwater off the coast of Lanzarote, Spain, and will eventually be reclaimed by the sea. The work鈥檚 name, Rubicon, draws from the idea the crowd, and the world, are heading towards a point of no return as temperatures rise.
The image of Rubicon is taken from a new book, , which details how our oceans have been a 鈥渟ymbol of infinity, beauty, solitude, isolation, danger, happiness, weightlessness and longing鈥� in art through the centuries. Featuring more than 300 images ranging from Roman mosaics to nautical cartography, Ocean also highlights how climate change has affected the seas.
NNtonio Rod (Antonio Rodr铆guez Canto) took 25,000 photos over the course of a year to make the award-winning time-lapse film Coral Colors (2016), from which the striking still Trachyphyllia (see above), featured in the book, is taken. Rod wanted his film to raise awareness of corals as they become more vulnerable to climate change-related bleaching.
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Ocean also features marine biologist Carl Chun鈥檚 stunning illustration of an octopus (Muusoctopus, formerly Polypus levis), drawn from a specimen collected near the Kerguelen Islands in the south of the Indian Ocean during the 19th century. The illustration (above) is included in Die Cephalopoden, Chun鈥檚 seminal 1910 work on cephalopod molluscs.
Book publisher Phaidon Editions
