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“Fear makes me alert, it hasn’t stopped me from doing anything,” says Amos Nachoum, an internationally renowned wildlife photographer for his underwater images.
From Antarctica to the High Arctic, he has dived into extreme environments to capture some of the most magnificent and elusive predators that live underwater.
Among the many creatures he has photographed, his list includes blue whales, killer whales, anacondas, Nile crocodiles and of course sharks.
But unlike most photographers, Amos does not use a cage safety in the water.
“I wanted to show in a picture what it’s like to deal with the Big White,” he told BBC radio Outlook Outlook.
“If we don’t provoke them, if we don’t harass them, we can be with them peacefully.”
There are no demons in the sea
In fact, he was three feet away when he photographed a great white shark.
We are used to seeing the jaws of a the shark as a symbol of terror.
But the Israeli photographer sees elegance, power and beauty in animals.
Over the past 45 years, he says he has struggled to change the misconception that certain species, like the Great White, are just ruthless killing machines.
“There are no demons in the sea,” he often says.
Currently considered one of the best photographers in his fieldAmos Nachoom’s first contact with a camera dates back to his teenage years, when at the age of 12 he found one in his father’s warehouse.
He lived in Tel Aviv with his parents, a Jewish couple who had fled Libya.
Amos learned to use an old camera and started taking pictures.
“I realized that photography gave me the opportunity to express myself,” he recalls.
His relationship with his father, which he describes as strict, was difficult.
He left home at 14 to live and work with the local fishermen, who taught him a very important skill: diving.
His departure from Israel
He later performed compulsory military service in Israel and fought in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.
Amos says he was traumatized by the violence and left Israel to start a new life in the United States.
He drove taxis in New York and made a living doing odd jobs before finding his place in the water: as a diving instructor.
While accompanying a group of tourists on a diving vacation, an American taking pictures with an underwater camera gave him an idea.
He could do it too.
Once he combined diving with photography, he set out to bring a new perspective to the great creatures that lurk under the sea.
“The general relationship with large animals, with sharks and whales, was very negative,” he recalls, “but my relationship was very positive”.
The last dream
Amos had a particular dream he wanted to achieve: to be the first man to photograph a polar bear, in the water.
He remembers his father calling it a “suicide mission” when he found out about his plans.
“There was a total disconnection,” Amos says of his father, who preferred to see him settle down and get married.
“He abandoned me. He couldn’t connect with what I was doing.”
Undeterred, Amos headed north to the Arctic in the spring of 2000.
With the help of a local Inuit guide, he spotted a male polar bear and jumped into the water.
“You always need a very good guide and a lot of experience before doing something like this, because there is a possibility of an accident.
The wind blew his boat away from Amos, as the polar bear got closer and closer.
But Amos had done his homework in advance. He had read that polar bears could not dive deeper than 10 meters.
“The polar bear is very heavy and has a lot of fat on its body and on its skin. He has to work hard to get off, ”he said.
Decades of experience have taught him to watch signals in an animal that may indicate that an attack is imminent.
He was barely saved
When the bear came within twenty feet of him, Amos dived, and the bear followed.
“So it was a drama,” he says.
“He was about 15 or 17 meters away and he continued to descend. I could only see his paws, nose and muzzle. Honestly, that scared me.”
Amos had little chances to fight or flee of the large carnivore.
“When I was about 22 meters, I looked up. Instead of facing me vertically, towards me the bear was more horizontal and swam at that level.”
He survived and luckily when he resurfaced the polar bear was gone.
A trip to the Arctic costs a lot of money and preparation, including renting a charter plane and setting up tents.
Amos was determined to try a second time to take the photo of his dreams.
Second trial
The opportunity presented itself years later when his student Yonatan Mir made a documentary about him, which brought them both to the Arctic in 2015.
They got a budget of $ 1 million for the project, an amount that would only allow them to stay for five days.
They searched for four days without success, until the precious moment arrived.
“We saw them come down the hill and dive into the water.”
They had finally spotted a mother bear with her two cubs.
It will be the first time a polar bear has been photographed with two cubs in these circumstances.
This time, Amos had a dive buddy, Adam, who was there to film the event.
“They were getting closer and closer to us. I looked at Adam and took the regulator out of my mouth, smiled and put the regulator back on and went down,” Amos recalls.
“She (the polar bear) flew over our heads. I turned to take a picture of her.”
The image he took was the silhouette of a bear, so he waited for the photo to show the bears looking at him.
“The mother bear was initially above the water. Then she lowered her head … I was clicking all the time, all the pictures I could take.”
“My hero”
While Amos focused on polar bears, the filmmakers spoke to his now bedridden father back in Israel.
“My good boy, my crazy son and my hero,” were his words on Amos.
For most of his adult life, Amos says he barely spoke to his father.
“I was stunned. I had a hard time understanding what was coming out of his mouth and knowing what he was thinking of me.”
His father died before Amos could return to Israel.
But on his return, he visited the cemetery and took the framed photo of the polar bear with him to place on his grave.
“I realized something he didn’t think he could.”
But the famous photographer also adds.
“I challenged myself to be the best I can be.”
(You can listen to Amos Nachoum’s full interview here in English.)
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