Appeared in DIVER July 2007
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Fish Face
A thousand faces
David Doubilet is probably the world's best underwater photographer, and probably the most highly paid. He is one of the few who treats each assignment as a topside professional photographer would do. We have seen some stupendous and mighty coffee-table volumes of breathtaking underwater pictures from him.
Even so, he too inevitably ends up with a great many good pictures that never see the light of day. I suspect that Fish Face came about because he had so many fish portraits that someone suggested they would make a volume all of their own.
He was very selective but, even so, this 3cm-thick pocket volume is loaded with so many good images that one is spoiled for choice.
As so many of his subjects are quite small, black backgrounds predominate. This can leave the book looking a little gloomy, but all the usual suspects are here.
It's fatal to try to dip in, or flip the pages scanning for good images. They're all good! There are precious few words, but you need to approach the task of digesting this material as you would read a novel - start at the beginning and work through slowly to the end. The publisher has thoughtfully supplied a flyleaf that can be used as a bookmark.
John Bantin
Fish Face by David Doubilet, Phaidon, ISBN 9780714847573. Hardback, 400pp, £12.95
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