Jem Cresswell

Bio

Jem Cresswell grew up in South Australia. The majority of his teen years were spent chasing swells, diving and camping with friends along the rugged edges of The Great Australian Bight. The Bight is a wild place where vast desert spills into roaring ocean. An unadulterated environment supporting a unique array of wildlife which Jem often credits with the early development of his affinity and respect for the natural world. As time went on Jem became infatuated with the sensations that came from being completely immersed in the ocean. He revelled in the immediacy that immersion demanded, the primacy it placed on the present moment. It gave him a taste of a very real, tangible kind of freedom from everyday life on land. Jem purchased his first underwater film camera when he was 17. Photography gave him the ability to take people on a journey into the elements, allowing him to capture and communicate the extraordinary and vibrant world he encountered beneath the surface. In 2014 Jem started his first long term project and for the next five years he would painstakingly document the awe-inspiring behaviors and undeniable anthropomorphism of the Humpback whale. This period would culminate in a series of portraits showcasing human-like recognition of empathy, family and sentience, beautifully realized in large-scale print. Jem has continuously honed and evolved his craft, exploring his ideas and their possibilities exhaustively. His dedication has produced a wide selection of carefully considered works elegant in both composition and tonality, expressing qualities far beyond the brilliance of his technical prowess. Jem’s work has been exhibited in Australia, Paris, Kuwait, New York and China