The ocean, without orientation by shore or horizon, is a perennial shape shifter – a thing of constant flux – living, morphing, never repeating. Without context or bearing, the surface landscape of the sea becomes whatever the moment tells us it is – an abstraction of nature disjunct from its typical frame of reference.

Art photographer Bartolomeo Celestino has been revisiting a particular spot on Sydney’s coast with his large-format camera and pointing its lens at the vastness below, day in, day out, for years. Each shot in the series that makes up Surface Phenomena – his first book and latest exhibition – tells the story of one of these singular moments, in one of these days, in the dynamic life of the Australian ocean.

Surface Phenomena will run from July 6 to 26 at Sydney's Olsen Irwin Gallery.