Women Mind the Water Podcast Series: Polly Dawson, Mexico

Submitted as part of the Women Mind the Water (WMW) digital stories project produced by Pam Ferris-Olson, in conjunction with Stories from Main Street and the traveling exhibition "Water/Ways." This story is one in a series created for a podcast in 2020-21, featuring regional artists whose inspiration blends conversation, activism, science, and water. Find earlier stories from the WMW initiative by searching for "Women Mind the Water" on this website.

Polly Dawson is a fashion designer, diver, and photographer. Her photography is a reflection of her experiences in fashion and with the ocean. Polly currently lives and works in Playa del Carmen, Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico where she takes underwater photographic portraits in the sinkholes or cenotes that are a geologic feature of the area.

Pamela Ferris-Olson (00:13): (singing).

Pam Ferris-Olson (00:17): The Women Mind the Water Podcast engages conversation about their work and explores their connection with the ocean. Through these stories, Women Mind the Water hopes to inspire and encourage action to protect the ocean and her creatures.

Today, I am speaking with Polly Dawson. Polly is a photographer in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. She has a master's degree in fashion design and spent nearly a decade working in fashion houses in London and Paris before leaving her job to travel in East Africa. Along the way she became a diving instructor. Polly now lives on the Yucatan peninsula, where she works for a wedding photography studio that is world famous for being the first photograph brides and grooms underwater in the cenotes of the Riviera Maya. Cenotes are fresh water sinkholes form in the limestone bedrock. Polly's work combines her talents in fashion design, diving and photography.

Let me start by asking about where you grew up and your journey to becoming a photographer. Were you always interested in photography?

Polly Dawson (01:29): I was not always interested in photography, per se, I think I was always interested somehow in the power of the image though. When I was working in fashion design, actually I had friends who a well-known very, very cool fashion photographers, but in that moment, photography didn't really interest me or speak to me so much. However, in fashion design, we use images all the time for inspiration, for conveying ideas, conveying messages that sometimes words just don't do justice, I think. The power of the image for me is that we can all look at something and almost immediately we have a reaction to what we're seeing. It makes us feel a certain kind of way, or it provokes some thoughts or reactions in us. I would say while I was not specifically interested in making images, I've certainly always be extremely interested in how those images inspire us and the ideas that they provoke.

Pam Ferris-Olson (02:40): Which came first, diving or photography, or did they evolve together? How did you end up in Mexico taking photographs?

Polly Dawson (02:50): In a way, I think the diving did come first. I have been so lucky to travel to many different places. I learned to dive really during traveling, through my travels in East Africa. Yeah, when you go on the water, you are amazed, you're seeing things that you never see before. You want to show people, you want to capture that, you want to remember that. I had an opportunity to work for one year in Djibouti, which is in the Horn of Africa. It's a small, stable little country on the Horn of Africa that's known because that's where the security teams jump on the boats to protect from the Somalian pirates, there you go. The company that I worked for, actually, we were taking members of the US military diving, as a recreational activity. We also had some commercial diving equipment in our offices because we have all these cargo ships in the area so we were trying to also go underwater and survey the ships as well. I found in a cupboard, basically, the tiniest, littlest underwater camera and just took it diving with me one day. Where we were working, the water is not very clear, but it's full, full, full of food. Djibouti is actually one of the easiest places in the world to see whale sharks, because the waters are just so rich that they just go and scoop it up basically. The waters are full, full, full and rich with fish. You can lose your divers in the fish. It's just natural, I think, when you have a way to record that and share it and revisit it and show other people, you want to do that. When I finally made it to Mexico, I found myself in a very unique location, not so much for the ocean life, but for the life in the cenotes. As you mentioned, the cenotes, they are fresh water sinkholes, you can call them. Really, the whole of the Yucatan peninsula is a Swiss cheese of underwater river systems. There are no surface rivers in this part of Mexico. The water just goes straight through the rock and finds its way to the ocean through the rock.

One of the very special things about these cenotes is because the water is going through the rock to get in there, it's filtered on the way down. It's like a water filter, a Brita filter, and the water is really, really clear. Whereas in the ocean you can expect to maybe have 20 meters visibility, say 65 feet visibility, in the cenotes it's more like 70 meters or 230 feet. You can see forever, and combined with that, you have beautiful rays of light. It's really a hallmark of photos created in the cenotes in this area, and that's the sunlight filtering through the leaves in the trees and just creating these rays that are shooting through the water.

When I found myself in this area, I thought to myself, if ever you're going to invest in underwater photography, this is the time. People spend a lot of money every year to come here on vacation and I live here, so I would be missing out not to use this opportunity to take underwater photos.

Pam Ferris-Olson (06:43): Polly, I'd like to hear the story behind a particular photograph that reflects on your connection with the ocean. Please, when you're discussing that picture, would you describe it for those who are listening to an audio-only version of the podcast?

Polly Dawson (06:59): Yeah, absolutely. I would love to talk about a photograph that I took in a cenote of a bride and groom underwater, or fiance's underwater. The photograph is a guy kneeling down, holding up in his hands a big red ruby-looking ring to a mermaid, to his just fiance, with her glittery mermaid tail floating in the water with the beautiful blue light filtering down behind them.

This photograph is really special to me. It's an idea that I had that turned into a viral photo story. It's been published all over the world, like we were published in Huffington Post and then it was just picked up by different news agencies in the world. It's been published in China, like everywhere you can imagine.

I'm so grateful to the magical underwater environment, really, for this. The story goes that we had a guy to contact us and say, "I want to propose to my girlfriend, but I want to do the most crazy thing that you can imagine." He told me, "If it's dangerous, I don't care. I want to do something really different and really unforgettable." I talked with him, I asked like, "Tell me a little bit of information about your girlfriend." I looked at her social media, she was like, okay, she likes mermaids. I mean, everyone likes mermaids, how can you not?

I just came up with this idea that we're going to do a proposal and then we're going to do the ultimate proposal photograph. For me, it's become such a trend these days to have very documented, very produced, let's say, proposal experiences. People spend a ton of money, they have all these complicated logistics. It's beautiful, but it's kind of crazy, right? I thought, hey, if we're going to do something that complicated and crazy, why just not go all the way? Let's embrace the full fantasy. We're going to do an underwater proposal as a mermaid.

For me, it just sums up so many of the things that I love most about the underwater environment and underwater photography. It's, for me, all about that other-worldly fantasy. There is something magical for me that happens when you go underwater and you enter the underwater world. On the other side of the surface of water, it's right there, it's right there. We can step into the ocean, a lake, a bathtub, whatever, but as soon as we slither under the surface, everything changes. We feel different, we feel the water on the body, we feel the temperature change. We move differently, fabrics behave differently. Your hair floats around, if you have hair. It's a place where time is different and really the imagination can just run wild.

Pam Ferris-Olson (10:35): Polly, how would you like others to react to the photographs?

Polly Dawson (10:40): There's something very childlike about the way we react to the things that we see underwater. It's really a sense of wonder. That can be because of the creatures that we're seeing or because of the way we feel. Human beings, we've evolved to have a relationship with water. That's part of us. Our relationship with water is integral, even if it's just because we need to drink it every day. I think there's something primal, I think there's something visceral. Yeah, it really transports us.

Pam Ferris-Olson (11:18): How does your work engage people in caring about the ocean?

Polly Dawson (11:22): I mean, the easy answer about how my work engaged people to care more about the ocean is you love what you know. I think it's very interesting especially that I work primarily in the cenotes these days, which are inland fresh water sources of water. When we think about the water and conservation, we think about the ocean a lot. We think about turtles with straws in their noses or trash floating or whatever it may be, pollution wise, but a lot really happens in land also. In this part of Mexico, because it's a Swiss cheese, everything that goes into the land goes into the water. The water is connected to the ocean and you really feel that and see that. Many, many tourists who visit this area, they're going to experience the rivers, the underwater rivers, flowing into the ocean. I think that's just another degree of understanding about the connection.

Pam Ferris-Olson (12:28): What's next for you?

Polly Dawson (12:29): Right now, I want to make a little bit more of a circle, come back a little bit more to the fashion way of being. It's been an amazing experience for me working with brides and grooms, working in the wedding industry in this part of Mexico, but I would like to start as well doing some more, let's say, creative photography or artistic or something where I don't have to worry about if the bride's going to like how her face looks or worry about how her hair is or whatever. I think that allows much more possibility for creative expression and to use all the beautiful gifts that there are around us in this area to create really special and unique imagery.

Pam Ferris-Olson (13:21): I have been speaking with Polly Dawson, the Women Mind the Water Podcast series. The series can be viewed on womenmindthewater.com. An audio-only version of this podcast is available on the Woman Mind the Water website and on iTunes. This is Pam Ferris-Olson, thank you for listening.

Pamela Ferris-Olson (13:40): (singing).

Asset ID: 2021.02.03
Themes: Women Mind the Water, art, artists, fashion, diving, underwater photography, geology
Date recorded: February 1, 2021
Length of recording: 13:53 m
Related traveling exhibition: Water/Ways
Sponsor or affiliated organization: Women Mind the Water 
More information: https://womenmindthewater.com/