Mermaids features a dazzling array of photographs in which the photographer explores the theme of the female nude submerged in water. The simple sexy elegance and allure of these images is breathtaking. As Christopher Sweet writes in his introduction to the book: “Whether diving in the blue refractions of a swimming pool or suspended like a seraph in the cool, pellucid depths of a spring or emerging tentatively onto a rocky shore, Michael Dweck’s mermaids are lovely and aloof and bare of all raiment but for their beautiful manes and the elemental draperies that surround them. Water, light, and lens converge to capture in modern guise the elusive creature of myth.”

The new book and exhibition celebrate the modern mermaid, as represented by beautiful young women who appear very much at home in the water. Some of Dweck’s subjects come from Aripeka, an island fishing village on the gulf coast of Florida, and have spent much of their lives in and around the water and are capable of holding their breaths underwater for as long as five to six minutes. Photographed in Montauk and Amagansett, but mostly in the vicinity of the Weeki Wachee River in Florida, Dweck’s new work, while often abstracting the female body in a painterly swirl of watery refractions, celebrates the physical charm of the female form and the transformational effect that is achieved by the shedding of clothes and psychic baggage in the meditative isolation of the underwater world.

Mermaids will be released June 19, 2008 and is available for $75.00 through www.MichaelDweck.com and in finer bookstores and museums.