WHY THIS PHOTOGRAPHER SWAPPED FASHION’S FRONT ROW FOR THE FRONT LINE OF OCEAN CONSERVATION
For our latest In Focus, we speak with Zoë Lower, a photographer with a fine art and fashion background who left that world behind to document the stunning beauty and harsh reality of our oceans
For over a decade, Zoë Lower captured the chaos and beauty of London Fashion Week, photographing icons like the late Vivienne Westwood at work, alongside young designers honing their craft. In 2017, she was watching Stella McCartney speak about the oceans at the British Fashion Awards, a moment that struck her as unusual – the environment isn’t necessarily the chosen topic of conversation at events like this – and knew that her life had to change. She started making frequent trips to Indonesia to spend more time in the water, and was confronted with the strain that our oceans are under. Knowing that she needed to report on what she was seeing, she bought her first underwater housing equipment and left London behind permanently, embarking on a journey around the world and swapping fashion’s front row for the front line of ocean conservation.
Lower’s photography encapsulates the duality of the oceans, the allure of our blue world and the extreme pressure that it’s under. One photograph might depict a shiver of sharks, surrounded by fish, an image that depicts a seemingly thriving marine ecosystem. Or a fever of mobula rays, who look as much like extraterrestrials flying through space as they do marine creatures making their way across the ocean. However, the next might show bleached corals, followed by a plastic bag floating aimlessly through open water. Her underwater portraits of people are ethereal, communicating a sense of slowness, and feel indebted to her work as a fashion photographer and her fine art background – it’s easy to imagine these images on the pages of Vogue.
Despite having grown up in the UK, Lower was born in Perth and consequently spent the first year of her life on the beach, a period that she obviously can’t recall but believes was formative and the reason that she’s always had an intimate connection to the oceans. Her passion for conservation extends beyond her own photography too – she’s now an ambassador for the action platform Only One and also contributes to Kogia, the ocean photography library.
For the latest in our In Focus series, we caught up with Lower to find out more about what inspires her work, why she finds freediving so addictive, and the impact that she sees humans having on our oceans.
“Our underwater gardens are the foundations of all life in the ocean, and they deserve to be celebrated for the delicate display of architecture that they are.”
Zoë Lower
Q & A
Where did you grow up? Was it a childhood spent close to the ocean that sparked your love for it?
The title of ‘water baby’ is one that I adopted from an early age, as I’ve always been at peace in the water. I grew up in the UK, but I was born in Perth, Western Australia and spent my first year of life playing in the sand, which I do feel bonded me to the ocean on some inherent level, as I have always identified as an ocean lover, despite not living close to it. During my childhood, I settled for fulfilling my aquatic needs with swimming, which has been my source of meditation and calm throughout my life. However once I began properly traveling in my late teens, I truly connected with my inner mermaid and every trip became about spending more and more time in the ocean, to the point where I now almost exclusively navigate my time around our blue spaces. Now, my sense of purpose and duty lies in advocating for the place where I most belong, whilst trying to guide others back to their instinctive appreciation of the natural world.
You have a lot of experience shooting fashion, for clients such as Burberry and Vivienne Westwood. But you've transitioned into shooting underwater now, which is quite a drastic change. What inspired that shift?
I was very embedded in the fashion industry for twelve years, working as an in-house backstage photographer for London Fashion Week every season, as well as individual designers and publications. I had a front row seat to some truly incredible shows, capturing some pioneers like Vivienne Westwood at work. In many ways, it fuelled my creativity and I thrived off the buzz of the behind-the-scenes chaos and supporting other creators as their visions came to life. However, once I started to travel to Indonesia for two months every year from 2017, I started to feel a disconnect from my old life. I witnessed more and more the plight of our oceans, particularly the ocean plastics crisis, and I felt a growing call to arms that became impossible to silence, nor did I want to. I had already stopped supporting the fast fashion industry by this stage, only purchasing second hand clothing or handmade pieces from independent designers, and so the hypocrisy of my career was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. I remember being stood with my camera in hand in the Royal Albert Hall, whilst shooting at the British Fashion Awards, listening to Stella McCartney talk about our oceans (for what felt like the first time in that setting), with tears pouring down my face, as it felt so poignant for these two worlds to collide. At that stage I knew that my time had come to join the fight from the front lines. So in September 2022 I left the UK, I finally invested in my first underwater housing and I have been following my camera around the world ever since, seeking out the ocean stories that desperately need to be told.
Zoë rescuing a mobula ray (Photo: André Smits)
“It’s hard to express what it is that I find so addictive about freediving, and to explain the spell it casts to those who find the whole concept terrifying.”
Zoë Lower
You're a freediver - can you tell us a bit about how you acquired that skill and how often you get to do it? What do you love about the feeling of it?
I took my first course in 2019 with the amazing girls at Apnea Bali, and from that first line dive I was hooked. I’ve been very fortunate to have had the opportunity to train consistently since I moved to Indonesia in 2022, where I spent the majority of my time living in north Bali, in a small but beautiful freediving community that sits beneath the volcano. Whilst traveling through remote parts of Indonesia, I was able to develop those skills whilst exploring some of the most stunning reef systems in the world, which built my comfort and confidence with being underwater with my camera. Since then, my diving has taken me to depths of 50 meters in the Philippines, where I also competed in my first pool competition and completed my instructor course, and then onto Baja California Sur in Mexico, where I have spent the last six months in total paradise, working as a safety diver at Freedive Passion La Ventana. We’ve had orcas, dolphins, whales, sea lions, sharks and mobulas come and visit us on the line – it’s hard to imagine anything will ever be able to top those wild, raw yet intimate moments.
It’s hard to express what it is that I find so addictive about freediving, and to explain the spell it casts to those who find the whole concept terrifying. For me, it’s my therapy, and ultimately it’s a game of trust with one’s self. It’s about learning the art of true relaxation, the ability to self soothe away any tension or resistance, to quiet the mind and leave it all on the surface, ensuring that you start each dive heading down to a place that you really want to be. If you can master that, it can lead to that golden moment when your mind and body are working in complete synergy - that’s when the perfect dive arrives. Effortless, euphoric, and a sense of peaceful power like nothing I’ve experienced before. It’s just you, the present moment and the ocean’s enveloping embrace; and it’s pure magic.
What advice would you give to someone who wanted to start freediving as well as taking photos?
For me, freediving with a camera is a totally different experience to that I’ve described above. What was once about going inwards, becomes about focusing your attention entirely on your subject, so the mindfulness is hard to transfer. My advice would be that if you want to be comfortable on breath-hold with your camera, then you need to build a strong sense of faith in your abilities without it first. That’s how you can ensure that when a moment arises when you’re faced with a once in a lifetime encounter with marine life, that you can push yourself safely within your limits to capture the shot. Knowing how to soothe that voice within that says it’s time to come up is the real art of freediving photography, along with reading behaviors, understanding how to place yourself and how to move in the water to be accepted and welcomed by your subjects. I often find I repeat to myself “be the water”, and if you move and flow in that calm state when you’re down there, then you’re much more likely to have that dream encounter.
My other key piece of advice is one that I am constantly reminding myself of also; it’s important to enjoy these moments with your eyes first, and your camera second. It’s all too easy to get tunnel vision through your viewfinder and fail to take in the magnitude of the scenes unfolding before your eyes. Don’t take them for granted, and remember to feel the magic for yourself too. If you get it on camera, that’s a bonus. Always dive with a buddy keeping an eye on you as well, that’s a non negotiable.
"My mission when creating underwater art is to try and produce work that is not only strikingly beautiful and worthy of being hung on people’s walls, but that provokes emotion in the viewer."
Zoë Lower
Coming from a fine art background, how do you think that influences your ocean photography?
I am often told that my work feels painterly, and for me that is the highest compliment, as I truly do try to create in a way that I feel I am painting with my lens sometimes. Some of my earlier paintings at school were very focused around the medium of water. I've always been obsessed with the finer details of reflections, ripples and textures, so it’s quite poetic that I am now trying to recreate these elements with my lens in the water.
My signature style from my fashion days has always been shooting double exposures. These intricate layers really allow me to add depth and fluidity to my work, which has taken on a whole new guise in the underwater realm. I love the spontaneity of shooting in this way, and I feel that it keeps me on my toes creatively, as it’s often a dance with my camera as to what exactly is going to come out from each frame.
People seem to really connect with the way I capture corals. I think my style of shooting means I am constantly on the hunt for interesting textures and minute details that others often overlook, so it’s made me slow down and appreciate every little organism that crosses the path of my lens. I’m really loving giving this attention and spotlight to the true artist, Mother Nature. Our underwater gardens are the foundations of all life in the ocean, and they deserve to be celebrated for the delicate display of architecture that they are.
You're an ambassador for Only One and also contribute to Kogia, the ocean photography library. Can you explain a little more about your journey into ocean conservation and the work that you're doing?
When I first picked up my housing at the start of 2023, I gave myself a year to dedicate to learning a new craft, shooting as many labor of love projects as possible for our oceans, as a means of transitioning from the fashion scene into the foreign world of underwater photography. I was in the process of a life overhaul; putting on my ocean warrior armor with passion pouring out of me, but no means of channeling it into purpose yet. Shooting free of charge for conservation initiatives gave me a sense of focus and much needed fulfillment, yet without any pressure to produce a specific outcome. I was fortunate to be living in Indonesia at the time, with a bounty of colorful coral reefs enabling me to explore my creativity and to build an ocean portfolio that reflected my unique style. I was proactive about contacting conservation projects and my first break came through the wonderful team at Ocean Culture Life, who commissioned me to shoot a coral restoration project in Bali, where they then exhibited my work at an ocean event they held. This vote of confidence meant everything and I started to take myself seriously as an ocean storyteller, using my platform to find my voice and share my musings. Yet I still felt lost in my mission, as I had been shooting for our oceans for over a year, but without a proper outlet for my imagery. It wasn’t long before Kogia found me and answered that call.
Their free oceanic library was founded with a sole purpose; to equip conservationists and activists with the photography and videography that they need to spread their message and affect change. To connect those in desperate need of eye-catching imagery, with the creators who have gold mines of impactful content buried deep in their hard drives. I have donated hundreds of my images to their database, and every time I am tagged in a post from a charity or organization using my images, it reassures me that the work I create matters, and that it is part of the solution. I only recently became an ambassador for Only One, which has been a major milestone for me, and I’m very honored to start working with them more closely on promoting their campaigns through impactful images. I hope that this marks a new chapter for my underwater photography career and a chance for my message to fall under as many eyes as possible, on behalf of our ocean. Since starting down this road of conservation photography, it’s been my purest hope that my work can in some way help with bringing the tides of change. Today I feel one huge step closer to that mission.
Do you have a favorite experience, or memory of the ocean?
This question feels impossible to answer after six months of being spoiled by gifts from the ocean here in Baja. Every time I'm in the water here it feels like I am treated to a dream encounter; from swimming with orcas and super pods of dolphins, to giant fevers of mobula rays and schools of silky sharks. The marine life here is wild and free, as it should be. Yet there is one memory that stands out for a very different reason.
In June of this year I was on a sea safari here in Baja California Sur. It had been a slow day and so our guide Jamie decided to stop at a fishing buoy to see if we could find some silky sharks that often patrol these spots. I will be forever grateful for his intuition that day, as not only did we find the sharks we were seeking, but they were soon eclipsed by the poor mobula ray that we spotted entangled about sixteen meters deep on the mooring line. The rescue mission that unfolded over the next hour is the most profound experience I’ve had in the water to date. After I dived down to cut the mooring line below, we took it in turns to swim the exhausted mobula to the surface so that we could cut the rope free. After finally releasing it, we were all extremely emotional when the ray returned to each of us, as if to say thank you, before we escorted it away from the sharks that had been circling us for the entire rescue. Memories like this are bittersweet for me, as for all the gratitude I felt for being in the right place at the right time, it only served to highlight the reality of how many poor souls will not have been so fortunate as to have rescuers arrive. This is the feeling that fuels my fire to keep highlighting the struggle and pain our practices are inflicting on our marine life, whilst also seeking out those with solutions that need to be showcased to the world.
What's the most incredible encounter you've had with an animal in the ocean, and why?
I’ve witnessed some stunning displays of wildlife over the last two years especially, yet my most treasured encounters are always those that are impossible to replicate. The more time I spend here in Baja, this answer continues to change, but a recent encounter with a sea lion will be pretty hard to beat for a while. We were out on the buoys doing freedive training last month, when a curious female sea lion started to zoom around the lines. We have seen them in the water close by, but we’ve never had one be so interactive with us. She was in an extremely playful mood, and ended up staying with us for two hours, escorting every diver down to depth at different stages of the session. I remember returning to the surface on a no fins dive, seeing my buddy at our safety meet, and then through the blur of the water (I was diving with a nose clip and no mask) I saw a second figure appear, and realized it was Sally, as we named her. I immediately abandoned my dive and began to dance and play around the line with her as I ascended. Moments like these are so powerful, as I feel that marine life is amazing at reminding us that the ocean should always be our playground first, and just how much childlike joy can be taken from the blue.
Do you have a favorite ocean photograph of yours?
It’s so hard to choose just one image, as I have been blessed to have countless encounters that I cherish, as well as the artworks I’ve been able to create to immortalize those moments so that I can share them with my community. However, if I had to choose one image that I feel most represents me and my work, it would have to be this shot I took on one of my first conservation projects in collaboration with Living Seas in Bali, commissioned by Ocean Culture Life. It was my first underwater photo to be included in an exhibition, and I love the way this shot blends the artistic aesthetic of my double exposures with my dedication to highlighting the invaluable work of our ocean guardians. My mission when creating underwater art is to try and produce work that is not only strikingly beautiful and worthy of being hung on people’s walls, but that provokes emotion in the viewer and is poignant in its essence. I hope that this piece is an expression of that, as a beacon of hope for our precious reefs and a testament to the special humans who refuse to give up the fight for a brighter future for our blue planet.
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