Amos Nachoum: the photographer who realized his “crazy dream” of swimming with marine predators

But unlike most photographers, Amos doesn’t use a safety cage in the water.

“I wanted to show in pictures what it takes to deal with the Great White,” he told BBC radio’s Outlook.

“If we don’t tease it, if we don’t make it worse, we can be with them peacefully.”

In fact, he was only a meter away from him when he took pictures of a great white shark.

We are used to seeing a shark’s jaws as a symbol of terror.

But the Israeli photographer sees the animal’s elegance, power and beauty.

For 45 years, he says he has worked to change the common misconception that some species, like the great white, are just ruthless killing machines.

“There are no demons at sea,” he often says.

Now considered one of the best photographers in his field and winner of numerous awards, Amos Nachoom had his first contact with a camera as a teenager, when he found one by chance in the storeroom of his father at the age of twelve.

He lived in Tel Aviv with his parents, a Jewish couple who had fled Libya.

Amos learned to use an old camera and started taking pictures.

“I realized that photography gave me a chance to express myself,” he recalls.

His relationship with his father, whom he describes as a strict and disciplined man, was difficult.

He left home at the age of 14 to live and work with local fishermen, who taught him an essential skill, diving.

Later, as a young man, he did his military service, which is compulsory in Israel, and fought in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

Amos says he was traumatized by the violence and left Israel to start a new life in the United States.

He drove taxis in New York and earned his living doing odd jobs, before finding his place in the water – as a diving instructor.

While accompanying a group of tourists on a diving vacation, an elderly American taking pictures with an underwater camera gave him an idea.

He might do the same.

Once he combined diving with photography, he set out to bring fresh eyes to the great creatures that lurk under the sea.

“The relationship to large animals, sharks and whales, was very negative”, he recalls, “but my relationship was very positive”.

Amos had a particular dream he wanted to achieve: to become the first man to photograph a polar bear – in the water.

He remembers his father calling it a “suicide mission” when he heard regarding his plans.

“There was a total disconnect,” Amos says of his father, who would have preferred to see him settle down and get married.

“He gave up on me. He mightn’t connect to what I was doing.”

Undeterred, Amos traveled to the Arctic in the spring of 2000.

With the help of a local Inuit guide, he spotted a male polar bear and dived into the water.

“You always need a very good guide and a lot of experience before you do something like this, because there is a chance of an accident.”

The wind was pushing their boat away from Amos, as the polar bear kept getting closer.

But Amos had done his homework beforehand. He had read that polar bears might not dive deeper than 10 meters.

“The polar bear is very heavy and has a lot of fat in its body and fur. It has to work very hard to get down,” he explains.

Decades of experience have taught him to look for signs in an animal that might indicate an attack is imminent.

When the bear came within nearly six meters of him, Amos dived, the bear following him.

“Then it was a tragedy,” he says.

“I was regarding 15-17 meters away and he kept going down. I might only see his hand paws, nose and snout. Honestly, I was scared.”

Amos had little luck fighting or fleeing the large carnivore.

“When I was regarding 75 feet away, I looked up. Instead of facing vertically at me, the bear was more horizontal and swam with the water level.”

He survived, and luckily when he surfaced the polar bear was gone.

A trip to the Arctic costs a lot of money and preparation, including hiring a charter plane and pitching tents.

Amos was determined to try a second time to take his dream photo.

The opportunity arose years later, when his student Yonatan Mir made a documentary film regarding him, taking the pair to the Arctic wilderness in 2015.

A budget of one million dollars (614,185,160 FCFA) was obtained for the project, a sum that would allow them to stay only five days.

They searched for four days with no luck, until the joyous moment arrived.

“We saw them coming down the hill and into the water.”

They had finally spotted a mother bear with her two cubs.

Photographing a polar bear with two cubs would be a first for a photographer.

This time, Amos Nachoum had a diving partner, Adam, who was there to film the event.

“They came closer and closer and straight towards us. I looked at Adam and took the regulator out of my mouth, smiled and put the regulator back on and went down,” Amos recalled.

“She (the polar bear) passed overhead. I turned on my stomach to take a picture of her.”

The image he took was the silhouette of a bear, so he waited for the shot showing the bears staring at him.

“The mother bear was above the water first. Then she put her head down. I was clicking, as many pictures as I might take.”

As Amos zoomed in on the polar bears, the makers of the documentary spoke to his father, who is now bedridden, back in Israel.

He described Amos as “my good boy, my crazy son and my hero”.

For most of his adult life, Amos says he barely spoke to his father.

“I was stunned. I had a hard time understanding what was coming out of his mouth and knowing what he thought of me.”

His father died before Amos might return to Israel.

But when he returned, he went to the cemetery, taking the framed picture of the polar bear with him to place on his father’s grave.

“I did something he didn’t think I might do.”

But the famous photographer also adds .

“He challenged me to be the best I might be.”