Apniks

Jérôme Espla shooting « Génération Grand Bleu » in Amorgos, Greece, Summer 2017.

Apniks

I call them Apniks, by analogy with the Beatniks. The link with Kerouac, Burroughs and Ginsberg isn’t far-fetched in the least. Fred, Francine, Jérôme, Alex and their entire gilled gang make up a group of countercurrent freedivers. Their wide open spaces are the oceans and its depths where they move with complete freedom, far from the records races and medals. Like the founding members of the beat generation, they tune into their sole passion : filming, photographing and writing wherever their own adventures take them. And like the 1950s beatniks, they are profoundly addicted —to water and hypoxia. If their films, books and photographs are anything to go by, the result is the same: they float through spellbinding universes, their chance meetings the stuff of the most exalted delirium.