about esposito.
It was one specific moment.
I was standing thigh deep in the frigid Atlantic Ocean at Second Beach in Newport, R.I. late last winter, the wool hat on my head covered by the hood of my sweatshirt, my back to the waves. My lower body was covered by only shorts and ankle-high wetsuit boots. The air temperature was teetering near freezing and the sun hadn’t quite woken up yet—it had a case of the Mondays. I adjusted the shutter speed to account for the shaking of my cold, bare hands.
There was no glory in this moment: the sunrise, hidden by clouds, made the lighting mediocre at best, there were few other people at the beach to appreciate my courage, the weather conditions were far from comfortable and landscape was far from grandeur. But I was not miserable, in fact I was quite content; humbled by the serenity of it all.
My cold face against the camera, I could begin to make out the reason I was there. Rising from a Zen-like stretching position, a wetsuit waddled towards me carrying a surfboard, and soon a scrunched up face became visible. This was the shot I needed. The surfer was entering the water; a monk entering his temple and there I was documenting it, trying to understand his religion. Why would he sacrifice his body to these frigid conditions to walk on water?
Was I not doing the same for my respective “religion?”
It struck me that I too am a passionate believer in my “religion.” Sacrificing my body to these conditions so that I could get the story, the complete story, by immersing myself into it, without becoming a part of it. It is this passion that runs through my veins that kept me warm during those frigid mornings.