Up Close: Pools

Photographer Stephan Zirwes’ ‘Pool’ series illustrates the incredible waste of potential drinking water – not only in private pools but also in the privatisation of a public asset for commercial reasons.

  • Words + Photography: Stephan Zirwes

The ‘Pools’ series is a study of water: one of the most precious resources for life on our planet. My approach was to show water as a location for entertainment, but also to show the incredible waste of potential drinking water – not only in private pools but also in the privatisation of a public asset for commercial reasons.

Public pools are an important reminder that water should be free and accessible to everyone. The clean formal language and the simple design of the pictures treat this newsworthy issue with an elegance… almost a playfulness. I copied parts of the original pool tiles and enlarged them in a clear, visible way to create a kind of mount in patterns and take the viewer on a deep dive into the blue.

Stephan Zirwes is an award-winning German photographer.

Article taken from

Issue 02
Articles

Further Reading

View All

Up Close: Wall of Death

The stuntmen of Allahabad, north India, risk their lives daily by riding motorbikes around vertical walls made from salvaged wood. Defying gravity through sheer momentum, they create a vertiginous, noisy whirl of action to enthrall the crowds.

Unearth

Unrefined beauty: photographs taken from a small plane with its door removed reveal Rotterdam’s ore deposits and oil refineries to be an unexpected wellspring for an imposing abstract series.

Bach to the Future

An attempt to reach out to aliens becomes a retro-hit more than four decades after its launch.

Ice Music

Jazz musician Terje Isungset on why a trumpet made from a Greenland glacier will sound different to one made from a polluted frozen lake.

Pulp Comics: A Thing of the Past

Once a regular feature on US newsstands, we delve into the kitschy macho pulp of men’s adventure magazines and catch a glimpse of American Cold War psyche.

Erling Kagge

The Norwegian polar explorer, author, publisher and father of three talks to Avaunt about the motives behind his expeditions and the value of silence and solitude in the modern age.
Browse by Category