Ryo Minemizu is one of Japan’s emerging photographers in the field of marine life photography. The Secret World of Plankton, his series exhibited at Foto Care in New York, features 24 spectacular photographs, including 3 large-scale works, which capture in meticulous detail the beauty and complexity of plankton – tiny living things measuring about 2 mm to 15 mm that float and drift in our planet’s oceans and other bodies of water. Apart from bacteria, these plants, animals, and other types of organisms are the most abundant life form on earth and play a critical role in the marine food chain.
To create his photographs of plankton, Ryo Minemizu spends about eight hours a day – night and day – underwater, drifting and waiting for the right moment to press the shutter. He shoots with a fast shutter speed controlling the Depth of Field to just fractions of seconds while paying close attention to the movement of the water around his tiny subjects. After 20 years of diving and photographing, Ryo continues to be awestruck by the magic and mystery of marine life and the wide variety of shapes and colors of the world’s smallest sea creatures who for Ryo exemplify “life in its perfect status.” “Plankton symbolize how precious life is by their tiny existence,” he said. “I wanted other people to see them as they are in the sea so it was my motivation from the beginning to shoot plankton underwater which is quite a challenge. Most plankton are small and their movements are hard to predict.”
Ryo Minemizu, The secret world of plankton
June 21 to 24, 2017
Foto Care
43 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10010
USA
