Bryant Austin

Bryant Austin is an acclaimed portrait photographer – of whales. His full-body composite photos, often life-sized, capture a view of whales most humans never see. The drive to recreate the transcendent feeling one experiences floating an arm’s length from the eye of an inquisitive whale has inspired him to create on their scale. This process has resulted in the creation of limited edition portrait photographs measuring up to 4 X 6 feet, including original single edition composite photographs, measuring up to 8 X 36 feet.

His body of work is an unrivaled, enduring legacy that has no equivalent in the world, and manifests his vision of creating powerful, haunting images that arouse deep emotion and a sense of awe at the sacredness and beauty of life.

His photographs have been exhibited in solo shows in the U.S. and abroad, including the Monterey Museum of Art (Monterey, California), Focus Gallery (Chatham, Massachusetts), Tamada Museum (Tokyo, Japan), and the USA Gallery at the Australian National Maritime Museum (Sydney, Australia). Group exhibitions include the Peabody-Essex Museum (Salem, Massachusetts) and Eloise Picard Smith Gallery (University of California at Santa Cruz).

His work is in government, nonprofit, and corporate collections including the U.S. Embassy (Fiji, Suva), The Marisla Foundation (Laguna Beach, California), Pacific Life Foundation (Newport Beach, California), MathWorks (Natick, Massachusetts), and Hunter/Hall Ethical Managed Funds (Sydney, Australia).

Bryant is the recipient of the 2009 Julie Packard/Leon Panetta Ocean Hero Award presented by Save Our Shores (Santa Cruz, CA). His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, and Reuters, among others.

Bryant was born in Sacramento, CA, in 1969 and currently resides in Carmel, CA. His first photography book, "Beautiful Whale," was released in 2013 by Abrams Books.




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