54 colours of water: the Eastern Sea (2018)

Can the colours of water be collected?

The colours of the sea collected between Marina Wendtorf and Laboe are biologically the same colour, a colour value of 16 on the Forel-Ule scale. I was interested in the contrast of this measurable sea colour with our perception. Water may be perceived as blue, grey, greenish, yellowish, bluish-green, yellow-greenish or brown. The tone is "mixed" by the reflection, the light, the angle of incidence of the sun, the depth of the sea, the currents or water movements, the microbiological particles, the cloudiness of the sky, the distance and perspective of the viewer to the water surface and by the perception of the viewer himself. I wanted to collect these colours and document them with their "recipes". I photographed the seawater from the same perspective, always at the same distance to the water's surface and always with the same camera settings. The result was a colour fan that shows the spectrum of marine colours I found on one day.