WADING IN :THE STUDIO FLORIDA ARTIST PROFILES
By Nat ali a G a l i cza • P h o t o s by L u ca M a rt i n ez
YOUNG & Wild A teenage photographer captures the life force of Florida with a goal of preservation and protection.
Above, clockwise: A barred owl takes flight in the Everglades; A field of muhly grass; Luca Martinez wades into the water.
T
he first time Luca Martinez photographed Everglades National Park, he arrived in a shroud of darkness. All the 15-year-old could make out was 10 feet of pavement ahead of him, illuminated by the halo of his father’s headlights. But even if out of sight, the swamp was far from still. Cicadas screeched, pig frogs croaked and barred owls called out in a symphony of hoots. “It was like nature in full surround sound,” Martinez says.
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Then, the sun rose. Suddenly, tens of thousands of islands appeared on a river of swaying sawgrass. Cypress trees rose triumphantly out of the earth. The view overwhelmed him. How could such a crowded environment camouflage so easily? What else was there to be found? “This is the Everglades: so simple from the outside, so misunderstood,” Martinez says. “It’s a different kind of wild. It’s not like Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon that’s in front of you, screaming out at you.
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It requires you to be present, and it requires a closer look.” In the two years since his first visit, he’s sought to pull back the veil on this stretch of untamed wilderness. The self-taught teenage photographer, now 17, has trudged through waist-deep waters in freshwater sloughs and ventured into hidden cypress domes to help people fall in love with the uniquely Floridian landscape—just as he has. Much of what Martinez captures isn’t visible from the national park’s trails. Rare ghost orchids
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