Lucas Murnaghan Water Photography

Call Website Contact the business

Lucas Murnaghan Water Photography 1975–2021
MD, Fine Art Water Photographer
Estate managed by Antonio Lennert He has now traveled to four continents, shooting in major breaks around the globe.

Lucas Murnaghan is a Toronto-based photographer focusing on images that involve water and its surroundings. His early work focused primarily on surf and adventure photography, and he has always preferred to immerse himself in his environment leading to shooting from within the water. Surf brand sponsorships brought opportunities to shoot in-water photographic coverage for major international competitions, including the Rip Curl Pro Tofino and WSL Soup Bowl Pro. He has published his work in numerous publications and has staged two gallery shows. His love of photography has further evolved into fine art and editorial work in the underwater realm, and he has worked with several brands, subjects, and locations to create evocative and ethereal images. An accomplished triathlete and free diver himself, he works without additional SCUBA equipment, allowing him a deeper connection to his subject. This personal and organic approach allows for greater versatility in his shoots and a heightened level of intimacy to the finished product. Murnaghan brings a fresh eye to a challenging medium and takes his audience with him, below the surface, to see things from a novel perspective.

Lucas Murnaghan photographed Matthew Crawford in a Los Angeles pool in 2019 for what became Mind Over Matter.A face is t...
10/04/2026

Lucas Murnaghan photographed Matthew Crawford in a Los Angeles pool in 2019 for what became Mind Over Matter.

A face is the most recognizable feature in a human being. This image strips away the recognition, and the subject's identity doesn't necessarily fall apart. He holds his composure with nothing to prove it, no expression to read, no eyes to meet. Without a clear face to fix him as one specific man, he stops being himself and becomes a multiplicity of beings. That's why people are drawn to his image when they see it: there's a version of themselves in it.

This is the cover image of Lucas's debut book, Beneath the Surface, and one of the most recognized pieces in his archive. Editions live in private collections across Canada and the United States.

This is the final print of Mind Over Matter at 31 by 31 inches. For a piece this central to Lucas's work, and to how most people first encounter it, this is the last chance to bid on it.

The auction runs through BOYS! BOYS! BOYS!, closing Sunday, October 11 at 4pm ET.

Bid at https://boysboysboys.org/collections/artwork/products/auction-mind-over-matter-2018-lucas-murnaghan

Lucas would have turned 51 today.He spent his final years on the other side of the camera, searching for the right light...
09/26/2026

Lucas would have turned 51 today.

He spent his final years on the other side of the camera, searching for the right light. This is one of the few frames where he let it point back at him.

Since March 2021, the archive has kept working.

92 editioned prints
692 editioned books
7 group exhibitions
9 art auctions
6 publications

His work now lives in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, New York, San Francisco, Palm Springs, Santa Fe, New Orleans, Fire Island, London, Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Zurich, Croatia, Northern Ireland, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Sydney, Florianópolis, and beyond.

None of that happened on its own. Collectors wrote to me before I knew what to do with any of it. Curators made room when they had no obligation to.

And the men who trusted Lucas in the water are still part of why anyone gets to see it at all.

Thank you for keeping him in the room.

This is only the beginning.

Benjamin Selleck, California. Some awakenings are quiet. This one happens with his eyes closed.
09/13/2026

Benjamin Selleck, California.

Some awakenings are quiet. This one happens with his eyes closed.

There is a kind of blindness reserved only for the self. He holds his own hands in front of his own eyes and still canno...
09/06/2026

There is a kind of blindness reserved only for the self. He holds his own hands in front of his own eyes and still cannot read them, the water bending light just enough to keep a shape from resolving into fact. Recognition, it turns out, has little to do with proximity. A man can spend a lifetime an arm's length from himself, waiting for something like acceptance to bring him into focus

Devon Ryan, Georgian Bay. Lucas was drawn to the moments no one was posing for, a beat between suits, or before someone ...
08/30/2026

Devon Ryan, Georgian Bay.

Lucas was drawn to the moments no one was posing for, a beat between suits, or before someone realized the camera was already running. Something honest tends to surface right there.

Before Beneath the Surface had a name, there was a hotel pool in San Diego.Lucas was there on a surf trip, staying at th...
08/23/2026

Before Beneath the Surface had a name, there was a hotel pool in San Diego.

Lucas was there on a surf trip, staying at the Lafayette. He had been shooting surf for years by then. Underwater portraits were still something new he was only starting to play with.

Kevin and Isaac were staying at the same hotel. They came by to see what was happening at the pool, got in the water, and ended up playing with Lucas in the water for the rest of the afternoon. Neither of them had done anything like it before.

This is one of the first images Lucas made that day, an early step toward the work that would become Beneath the Surface.

Colin Love holds a cinder block against his chest at the bottom of a pool. He isn't fighting it; he's embracing that wei...
08/16/2026

Colin Love holds a cinder block against his chest at the bottom of a pool. He isn't fighting it; he's embracing that weight as an integral part of his existence while gazing straight into the camera. Lucas called the image No Ordinary Love.

The title holds more than one meaning. It could be about loving someone in a way that isn't simple or light, where the depth of that love carries real weight. It could also be about a harder kind of love: carrying something heavy for long enough that you finally set it down and learn to love yourself as you actually are.

Either way, Colin isn't buried under that weight. He's holding it tightly, owning it, still, steady, looking straight at us, entirely in possession of his own truth.

Cody Oehm's arms are held out and bent at the elbow, legs together, the same stabilizing stance a skydiver holds mid-fal...
08/08/2026

Cody Oehm's arms are held out and bent at the elbow, legs together, the same stabilizing stance a skydiver holds mid-fall. Nothing in his body is straining against the water. He's simply letting himself fall, and holding his form while he does it.

Lucas made this image freediving in the Bruce Peninsula, working underwater on his own breath alongside Cody rather than shooting from above. He built most of his titles around the emotion an image already carried rather than spelling it out, and this one, called Free Yourself, holds both control and surrender in the same frame.

Editions of this piece live in collections in California, Colorado, and Paris, and Toronto.

Free Yourself is available as editioned art. Message us for details.

Jacob Reinhard sat down on the steps of a Fort Lauderdale pool and, for a moment, stopped paying attention to the camera...
08/02/2026

Jacob Reinhard sat down on the steps of a Fort Lauderdale pool and, for a moment, stopped paying attention to the camera.

Lucas called the image The Truth Lies Within. Nothing about it was staged to look this way. Jacob is simply sitting with himself, chin against his hand, and Lucas was there to see it happen.

He once said that perhaps by losing our way in the water, we can find ourselves again. That idea runs through most of his work, but it's rarely as visible as it is in this one image, a man who has stopped performing and settled into his own thoughts.

The photograph is part of the same body of work as Beneath the Surface, the book that first brought seventy of these moments together in one place.

One copy of the second edition remains. When it sells, this edition is complete.

www.lucasmurnaghan.com/book/p/beneath-the-surface-photo-book-2nd-edition

Some photographs arrive quietly. This is one of them.Lucas made this image of Derek Macaulay. Derek has said that he's o...
07/26/2026

Some photographs arrive quietly. This is one of them.

Lucas made this image of Derek Macaulay. Derek has said that he's often felt out of place, a misfit, an outsider, and that being submerged in a quiet world with Lucas let him sink away from his anxieties and his messy thoughts.

Lucas had an instinct for that kind of moment, the one after the pose drops and something more honest comes through. He was patient enough to wait for it every time, and that patience runs through the full body of work now held in the Lucas Murnaghan archive.

For collectors and art enthusiasts who want to stay close to that archive as it grows, the Collectors Club is where that happens.

lucasmurnaghan.com/collectors-club

Address

Toronto, ON

Telephone

+14167228757

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Lucas Murnaghan Water Photography posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Lucas Murnaghan Water Photography:

Shortcuts

Share