The photographs in this exhibition are the result of a two-day encounter with the same pair of whales (a male and female) taken at Challenger Bank, a seamount 15 miles off the south-west of Bermuda, in March 2015.

Each encounter, which took place on two successive days, lasted over two hours, during which time Andrew Stevenson swam alone alongside the mammals who, at 45 feet long and weighing over 40 tonnes, dwarfed him. The photographs were taken with a 24mm lens on a camera, with underwater casing, weighing 70 pounds.

Despite the whales’ imposing presence, Stevenson remained calm in the water. “The way I get these images is by being totally passive,” he explains. “The boat is stationary, the engine off. I never dive down into their territory. I never swim after them. I stay at the surface. It’s always entirely on their terms.”

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