महासागर MahāsāgaraMeaning: ”great ocean" or "vast sea”. In Buhddism it symbolises vastness, boundlessness, and the depths of wisdom and consciousness.

By Vivek Vadoliya

Published by Friend

Edition Photographer and director Vivek Vadoliya explores the profound power of the ocean in a new body of work published as a 32-page zine by Oliver Shaw – Friend Editions.

Known for work that is grounded in humanity, Mahasagaraopens Vadoliya’s practice to the abstract and the unknown. These photographs were created in the moments after a frightening near-drowning experience in Madagascar, where calm, crystal clear, teal hues transformed into menacing midnight dusky blues and pulled Vadoliya into its infinity.

As panic turned to relief, strong riptide to soft cresting wave, Vadoliya surrendered himself to the ocean as clarity surfaced from its depths. His body and the tide found harmony and returned him to the safety of the shore. “In a dance of exhales and inhales, something shifted. I slowed down and let go and rode the wave,” he says. “It was like tapping into some universal rhythm that’s been there all along. Each beat felt like a reminder that we’re all part of something bigger, something timeless.”

Immediately following the experience, Vadoliya reached for his camera and made a series of photographs. “They are an act of interrogation to find meaning,” he explains, “made in homage to absolute awe of the power of the ocean.” After making ocean scapes for the following months, he came back to the images that were shot 30minutes after the experience. Visually, Mahasagarais a marked departure from Vadoliya’s previous work and opens a portal to reflect on the vastness of our interior and natural worlds. In the darkroom, Vadoliya used a cyanometer to study the spectrum of blues he had encountered amongst the waves. Further abstracting and confronting these hues that had haunted him. “This work acts as a study of its spectrum,” he says. “Like a Rothkö masterpiece, the ocean reveals itself as a canvas of infinite possibility.”

Like the pull of the tide, the colour blue has captivated cultures across centuries, each drawing unique meaning from its multitudes, whether Hindu cosmology to Islam, ancient Egypt, and China. In his seminal 19th-century text, Theory of Colors, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote: “We love to contemplate blue – not because it advances to us, but because it draws us after it.”

This same magnetism anchors Vadoliya’s photographs. Immediately after his near-drowning, Vadoliya turned back towards the ocean in an attempt to understand it. The very waves that threatened him harm mere moments before now swirl throughout his frames. Like the riptide that caught Vadoliya, these photographs pull the viewer into them, allowing us to find kinship with nature: in darkness, lightness, and all that exists in between.

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