Against the Elements: One Woman’s Vision
Kos Evans
This unique exhibition, will feature some of Kos’s most dramatic and breathtaking photographs, spanning more than 25 years as an award-winning marine sports photographer.
An acknowledged pioneer in her field, Kos is renowned for her extraordinary trademark masthead shots, taken some 200ft from the deck and often involving placing herself in real danger - dangling upside down from the mast wielding a 35mm camera for starters! She has also been known to hang out of the side of a helicopter capturing powerboats 20 feet off the water at 100mph.
Her aim, as always, is to capture the best, most challenging and most elusive photo, working against the elements to reflect her love – and awe - of the ocean in all its unfathomable majesty. “The sea is a moving canvas that changes by the millisecond and I have strived to show its every aspect,” Kos says. “You must always perceive the action before it happens.”
Whether climbing masts, diving below the yacht keel or swinging from a halyard, diminutive Kos is the original action girl of the high seas.
Surrey-born Kos began taking photographs at the age of five with her father’s Olympus Pen-FT. She shot her first powerboat at the age of 17 while still at school when she was asked to cover a racing event on Lake Como in Italy. She hasn’t had the silt – or the salt - out of her hair since!
In her quest to test the boundaries and discover ever-more impossible angles, Kos became one of the first to shoot powerboats from in the water and yacht races from underwater. “Diving under the marks of a race produces some unusual imagery but it can also be very dangerous,” she says with some understatement.