on a blue canvas - freediving photography by Daan Verhoeven

Prints available at “The art of breath hold” sounds a bit pretentious, doesn’t it? Everybody has tried holding their breath, there isn’t much art to not doing something. But when you look a bit closer, ask expert breath holders (yes, they exist), you’ll find that there is indeed much more to it – even some art. It’s like that with most matters – leave it to the experts to find wonder in seemingly simple things. I’ve been freediving for almost 20 years and documenting it professionally since 2012, slowly and almost unwittingly drifting into ’expert’ territory, and the longer I practise both, the more art I see. That might be due to a slightly romantic perspective, having eyes that see beauty everywhere, but there’s also an objective, or at least general, aspect to it: human are beautiful, water is wondrous, hence humans in water is magic. No? OK, some people splash around in water like electrocuted spaghetti, but watching a good freed