JADE | HOKSBERGEN

Underwater photographer, Jade Hoksbergen, has won multiple prestigious awards for her photography, including 2nd Place overall in the Ocean Photographer of the Year 2024, and winner of the Ocean Fine Art Photographer of the Year in 2023. She has co-authored two books and is regularly published in the international press. Her ocean-inspired paintings provide another glimpse to her creative vision. Of French-Taiwanese origin, she comes from a highly international background, and is at ease speaking in multiple languages.

With a dive-addicted father, Jade’s first experience on scuba came at just 9 years old. Growing up in the Philippines, a connection to the ocean was intrinsic to her upbringing. When working as a Divemaster in Saint Lucia, she first picked up an underwater camera, and a love for creative expression via photography quickly bloomed. With a distinctive style, Jade’s imagery is influenced by her paintings and she finds inspiration in the colourful pockets of life the ocean has to offer.

Jade is honoured to also have been a featured photographer in Editions Fifty Fathoms (the 2020 issue) published by Blancpain, which features 50 of some of the world’s best and most respected explorers and underwater photographers.

Her words and images are regularly published in international publications such as EZ DIVE, Plongez! Magazine, and Oceanographic Magazine. Equally at ease behind and in-front of a camera, she has numerous cover shots to her name. Jade was also speaker at ADEX Singapore and Beijing in 2019.

In 2019, she co-authored Black is the New Blue Vol. II, showcasing photographs taken during ‘blackwater diving’. Her latest book, the Guide to Cebu, was co-written with husband and frequent collaborator, Henley Spiers.

Although her expertise crosses many disciplines, at heart Jade is an artist, and it is her creative vision which most clearly defines her. Painting prolifically since her teenage years, she has been working on an OCEAN series of artworks for the last decade which brings together joint influences of expressionism, street art, and the underwater world.

Jade is based in Devon, U.K., where she shares her passion for the underwater world with her husband, Henley Spiers, as well as their two young daughters.

Jade | Underwater Photography:

I especially enjoy creating photos of the small inhabitants of our reefs, especially those that are often overlooked.

I would say that art has always been instrumental in my life. In fact, I have been painting long before I started clicking the camera underwater. But now, I find that my photography inspires my painting and my painting also influences the way that I observe and capture the underwater world. I think that my passion for underwater photography stems from my sentimental nature.

I hope that with my photography and art I can inspire others to see the beauty of the ocean which is unfortunately under incredible threat. I hope that it lends a voice to the ocean’s inhabitants who are so helpless in the face of the collective ecological damage we are responsible for.