Colorful, Manipulated Photographic Images

BRIDGEPORT — The Discovery Museum has opened its newest exhibition, “Water Colors,” a photographic collection of works by Darien resident Pamela Crimmins featuring surreal, colored images created by using an underwater camera. “Water Colors” will remain in the museum’s Balcony Gallery through September 28.

Ms Crimmins’ photographs evidence her love and feel of the nature of water, and occasionally offer images that convey an imagined story. Her painterly work is memorable, offering, in her words, “a record of inconsequential gestures that come to the viewer like memories of dreams and remind us of the fluid nature of perception.”

With no training in underwater photography, Ms Crimmins began experimenting with disposable underwater cameras and stumbled into a method that united her interests in theater, dance and water sports. Using her body as a dancer would, she manipulates the movement of the water, which acts as a lens through which she takes her photographs. Ms Crimmins’ subjects are her friends and family; she develops her prints herself.

Consulting curator Wendy Kelley remembers that the first time she saw one of Ms Crimmins’ underwater images, “The water was so clear and clean and heavy that I felt I was in the picture myself…” She called Ms Crimmins’ photographs “surreal, a wee bit strange, and very beautiful, expressing an inner world that is hers and probably ours as well.

The Discovery Museum, at 4450 Park Avenue, houses a planetarium, Challenger Learning Center and offers interactive scientific and technological exhibits, educational programs and special shows. To learn about other museum programs and exhibits, visit the museum’s Web site at www.discoverymuseum.org or call 203-372-3521.