Dive Like a Russian: Busted Myths & Concrete Facts

For us survivors of the Perestroika, there are still some nice things we recall from the nostalgic Soviet past—one of these being, of course, the endless Cousteau series, run and rerun so many times on black-and-white television. The skinny Frenchman, with the (supposedly) red beanie, introduced an entire generation (or two) to the mysterious underwater world, full of beauties and beasts.

Wolfgang Leander has died

We instantly became friends.  Wolfgang was mild-mannered, pleasant and very knowledgeable.  At the time his body was already quite ravaged by several bouts of cancer but not his spirit or positive outlook.

Inspirational

Wolfgang's purist b/w photography of sharks, shot on film with his trusty and battered Nikonos V, was one of the few that truly inspired me to take my own photography a tad further. There was always such a raw but at the same time elegant aesthetic over his imagery which always appealed to me, and still does to this day.