With its plane of blue-green water broken by dark shadows
and glimpses of sunburnt skin, Swimming Pool is a
colorful and complex image. Making visible a deep, still pool of water is a
complicated photographic task. Its transparency makes depth and form difficult to
ascertain. To solve this problem, Franco Fontana carefully composed this photograph,
utilizing limited elements to define the space. The placement of the figure at
the lower right and the shadows cast on the pool bottom create a visual
indication of distance, while the ripples across the water define that obscure
surface. Fontana focuses on these complex visual puzzles. He notes, “Photography
should not reproduce the visible; it should make the invisible visible.”