Oceanographic images and photography’s aqueous origins
How might photography and curatorial practice shift if understood through oceanic thinking rather than fixed visual regimes? Nuria Bofarull revisits photography’s aqueous origins—rooted in water, chemistry, light, and atmospheric conditions—to rethink the medium beyond stable images and linear narratives. Drawing on the Blue Humanities and Kaja Silverman’s Water in the Camera, photography is approached as a fluid, relational process shaped by immersion, circulation, and material instability rather than representational certainty. Curatorial practice is reframed as a tidal force, opening space for experiential, process-based, and ecological modes of meaning-making.
Extending this perspective, the lecture explores climate models and climate model images as narrative tools rather than neutral representations. Through the example of Daisyworld, a foundational climate model, Benjamin Lewin examines how models construct stories about planetary systems, agency, and homeostasis. Climate models often adopt a detached, “Earth-from-space” perspective, yet their strength lies in revealing unfolding processes rather than fixed truths. By foregrounding surprise, relationality, and situated experience, model images can bridge the gap between abstract climate systems and lived environmental realities.
The lecture concludes with Oceanographies Collective as a case study in applied oceanic methodology. Operating at the intersection of art, science, and society, Oceanographies develops exhibitions, fieldwork, and public programs that translate complex marine knowledge into affective, accessible forms. As a living laboratory, the collective demonstrates how oceanic thinking can reshape photographic narratives, curatorial strategies, and climate storytelling to foster care, responsibility, and new imaginaries for ocean futures.
Bio
Nuria Bofarull is a curator and storyteller based in Amsterdam. Her practice navigates the fluid intersections of oceanic narratives, marine ecologies, and contemporary photography to weave and nurture oceanic empathy, ecological restoration, and speculative maritime imaginaries. She leads communications management for diverse projects of the Coastal Systems Department at NIOZ – Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research. As co-founder and artistic director of Oceanographies Collective, she develops research-led, and art-driven projects that bring together artists, scientists, researchers, and coastal communities to imagine and activate critical, multidisciplinary engagements with the ocean through immersive formats.
In the recent past, Bofarull was the curator and lecturer of the exhibition lab “Unframing & Unfolding Photography” at the MA Photography at KABK (Royal Academy of Arts, The Hague) and has collaborated with institutions such as Buro Stedelijk, FOTODOK, Amsterdam Museum.
Benjamin Lewin is Head of Research at Oceanographies Collective. He works to develop relationship-building practices which include strong citizen science components. These practices are built on artistic-scientific principles, and harmonise with artistic and poetic ocean-human relationship building. He has a long standing interest in human/non-human relationship building, and the (re-)positioning and voices of non-humans inside naturecultures through the weaving together of various types of knowledge and sensing. He therefore also explores these themes through art, using creative nonfiction, painting and fibre arts.
Important information
The lecture will be held in a hybrid format and streamed online.