“This iceberg in Antarctica was so massive that I had to dive deep and capture 147 photos in frigid temperatures. Then, I pieced them together on a computer. Even nearly ten years later, my toes still bear the effects of that experience.”

Interview by Chris Broughton, October 9, 2024

As a child, I was mesmerized by Jacques Cousteau’s documentaries. They were a weekly highlight for our family and unlike anything else on television. Growing up near the coast, my brother and I often dreamed of exploring the ocean depths as Cousteau did. Our parents would warn us against swimming right after lunch or getting too close to crabs and jellyfish. During my teenage years, I found myself frustrated when my family seemed more focused on sunbathing than on underwater exploration. I often wished my dad were a diver or that we had grown up in a place like French Polynesia, thinking it would have offered me a deeper understanding of the underwater world.

Reflecting on it now, I realize that maybe those experiences shaped my sense of adventure, which continues to drive my work today. My photography often captures the unknown—creatures and environments that remain mostly unexplored. The oceans are teeming with wildlife and locations that have never been documented, though reaching them often presents significant challenges. I believe that the mystery of the unknown invokes a deeper respect than mere aesthetics. There’s something captivating about encountering something vast, strange, or even terrifying that I don’t entirely grasp, and it’s this curiosity that propels my desire to explore.

On one significant expedition, we undertook our longest dive, lasting five hours in water that was a chilling -1.8ºC. In 2010, I made history as the first diver to photograph a living coelacanth, a fish believed to have gone extinct since the age of the dinosaurs. This remarkable specimen was discovered in a cave 120 meters beneath the surface at Sodwana Bay, on South Africa’s east coast, where locals refer to them as gombessa. Since then, my ongoing gombessa project has led to numerous expeditions where I’ve photographed spawning groupers, witnessed a feeding frenzy of 700 sharks under a full moon, and explored the rich deep-sea ecosystems hidden beneath Antarctic ice.

During our Gombessa 3 expedition in Antarctica, we operated from the Dumont d’Urville scientific base—an incredible opportunity, as only about 100 researchers are accepted each year despite thousands of applications. Each day, we returned with extraordinary images that showcased the deep-sea biodiversity surrounding us.

The metaphor of hidden portions of an iceberg is a well-known one, but while we were in Antarctica, I began to consider how I could visually represent that idea. Many of the massive icebergs were too large and mobile to capture in one shot, but I discovered a smaller one that was trapped in ice at the surface. Since it didn’t reach the ocean floor, light was able to illuminate the area below. The lighting conditions were ideal for photography; it felt almost staged, with the divers’ torches providing a sense of scale.

Although this iceberg was small compared to others, it was still too large to capture in a close-up shot, and pulling back diminished image clarity. To address this, I devised a plan to send a long line with weights down to the ocean floor, creating a large grid in front of the iceberg to the desired distance. I then swam along this grid, taking photos at each point with my wide-angle lens until I captured the entire scene.

Setting up the net took my friend and me two days, followed by two to three hours of diving to gather all the images. The final result—147 photographs—were digitally stitched together to reveal the iceberg in its entirety, extending beyond our line of sight while diving next to it. Seeing it all come together on the screen was a breathtaking moment.

The longest dive of the expedition reached five hours, braving water temperatures at a frigid -1.8ºC. It took several months for the pain in my toes to ease. Even nearly a decade later, they still feel the strain, but images like this one make all the suffering worthwhile.

This photograph is featured in “60 Years of Wildlife Photographer of the Year: How Wildlife Photography Became Art,” available in hardback from nhmshop.co.uk.

Laurent Ballesta’s CV:
Born: Montpellier, France, 1974
Trained: Marine Biologist
Influences: Jacques Cousteau
High point: “Winning the Wildlife Photographer of the Year award, presented by the Natural History Museum in London, four times”
Top tip: “Don’t aim to create images that outshine your peers—strive to make yours unique.”