If I ever want to know what Chilean sea bass tastes like, I'll have to do it on the sly, without my significant other's knowledge and dine with someone that doesn't know about the Monterrey Seafood Watch guides. The part of me that's curious to experience all things, though, will generally lose out to the part that doesn't want to add to the world's woes. And who wants to be the person that ate the last Chilean sea bass?

Turbot (Psetta Maxima), from the series One Fish Two Fish by Mark Dimov

In his project One Fish Two Fish, contender Mark Dimov hopes to create a conversation about the fish that we see at the supermarket and on our restaurants' specials list. From his artist's statement:

Created in response to the April 2007 National Geographic special report, "Saving The Sea's Bounty" regarding the global fish crisis, these images of commonly consumed fish are individually photographed in silhouette. The resulting photographs punctuate the colors and textures of the animal's contours while disguising 90% of its central details. I believe this obscurity sparks curiosity and I hope to evoke a sense of beauty for these creatures in addition to open up a dialogue about sustainable fishing practices.

Shot with back-lighting, the contoured forms of these creatures are often shown with mouths agape or with splendidly illuminated displaying gills. This provokes me into a state of idealized projection concerning the nobility, grace of the creatures, and also solicits a general empathy with what is potentially my dinner's right to exist and not become, for example, an IUCN red-list species of Great Concern.

The son of a painter, Dimov's treatment of his subjects for this project creates strong associations for me of another artist that traffics in silhouetted forms and negative space, the painter Donald Sultan:

Apples and eggs 2000 by Donald Sultan

Black Flowers September 26 by Donald Sultan

Golden Tilefish (Lopholatilus Chamaeleonticeps), from the series One Fish Two Fish by Mark Dimov

In focusing upon form instead of centralized detail, and in creating compositions that force the minimalist treatment of those forms into our consideration, both Sultan and Dimov create something that is both beautiful to regard and effectively raises their most artistic concerns and problems to the front of our consciousness. How does negative space and silhouettes transform our understanding of subject and context? How much of context is content? What kind of content is there when you remove or obfuscate the context? How does this treatment effect how we look at, consider and/or care about what we are being shown?

There are over 50 species of sea creatures depicted in One Fish Two Fish, which can be viewed in its entirety on his website.