Water is Tobias Friedrich’s preferred element—especially the world under water. Extreme temperatures don’t bother him. Encounters with creatures that demand respect from most people or even scare them are his favorite kind. Side by side, he swims with sharks and orcas, tête-à-têtes with sea urchins and moray eels are nothing out of the ordinary for him. Doing what he does, he creates spectacular pictures that earn him one award after the other.

The things that someone who normally stays above water is unable to see are what ignite Tobias Friedrich’s curiosity in the first place: the community of plants and animals in the world’s seas, or things that aren’t even meant to be under water, such as ship wrecks, or other objects that have lost their footing in the world above water, a park bench in a lake, for example. Tobias Friedrich takes the people above water with him into the breathtaking world »down there« with his technique of capturing in a single shot the split view of what’s underneath and what’s above the water surface.