2016

In documenting the submerged human body, Hugh Arnold manages to express something essential about being human — a subtle energy that stirs beneath our skin. Arnold’s underwater photographs are a metaphorical map of human development: what it means to age, to love, to connect, and to struggle. Upon examination, it’s easy to forget that Arnold’s subjects are not angels in flight. It is this preternatural manifestation juxtaposed against humane subjects that lends itself to Humanity–it is an expression and understanding that all bodies are transcendent, even in physical form. There is a sense of connectivity through our very being, as though divinity is a direct response of being human.