A collection of photographs that depict the myth and the enigma of all the waters known to our world.
A visual sonnet flowing from the poetry of the ocean, to the music of the seas.
These are painterly verses that are recited as an ode to its elegance and greatness.,br> The silent whispers under the light of darkness and the rhythmic dance to the breath of the wind.

This is an artist’s tribute to the spirit of water expressed to quench the soul.

Perfumed Waters is a selection of images from Simon O’Dwyers world project, photographing the rhythms of ocean and water that began two years ago.
After his successful exhibition ‘White Side of the Moon’ (exhibited in 2003 at Blender Gallery) which incorporated his favourite and most photographed subject, the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, O’Dwyer has venture forward to the Philippines and New Zealand, following the waters to create a series of romantic works that move below the sea line.
Using the silent light of the moon, O’Dwyer converses along the silver trails in lands that have no time. Arriving at the edges of ancient cliffs, O’Dwyer shows you the small pleasures of his solitude before transcending under the waters where the line between reality and myth blurs and the mermaid is born.

Through these songs, O’Dwyer sings the verses of the mystery, beauty and power he sees in the woman, and his greatest love, the ocean.

Each image is uniquely created from a truth that is difficult to find in exhibitions these days.
The truth of an artist.
Photographs that enable the viewer to either hurt or smile, has a power that can only come from honesty and the ability to transform their own feelings into an image that can communicate.

Under the water, the photographs communicate love, passion, pain, sensuality and a deep affection for the woman.
As senior photographer for The Age, Simon O’Dwyer was a finalist in the 2003 Walkley Awards in the categories of News Photography and Best Photo Essay and received a commendation for best use of the media for “Firestorm”, his two month documentation of the Victorian bushfires.
From the jungles of Cambodia to Afghanistan during the war on terror, S11 riots, to the changing faces of our most prominent politicians.
For over a decade O’Dwyer has been amidst the forefront of Australian photojournalism, documenting the everflow of changing humanity that our world is faced with today. At the age of 34 O’Dwyer has participated and witnessed more in the last 10 years than most people see in a lifetime.

“Photography has taken me on a journey of the unknown. A new path, a new beginning as each day forms. My camera allows the doors of a stranger’s inner sanctum to be opened and explored, in order for me to tell their story and document their truth.”

Life is an intimate trail of stories as if reading one continuous novel. Each chapter uniquely individual which comes together to tell a story of a larger life.
“I have photographed the beauty of babies being born, to hearing the last breaths of dying men. Life is a mystery. What I see everyday is a privilege. It encompasses the whole spectrum of the human condition.”
In 2003, the “Firestorm”, images were shown at the National Gallery of Victoria and in the Leica Awards Exhibition, exhibited at the Center of Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, Photo-Technica Gallery, Sydney and Blender Gallery for the prestigious Walkley Award Finalist Exhibition.

O’Dwyers’s images practise a medium that lives and breathes within the boundaries of four corners, a language that is slick in composition, rich in mood and texture, close and personal, immediately powerful, yet is equally long and distant and amazingly subtle, that allows the viewer to wander and explore but most importantly, feel.