Like the camera, the periscope is an instrument for observation, but it enables its user to see over or around obstacles that prevent direct lines of sight. For his first monograph, Brazilian photographer José Diniz explored the coastlines of Brazil and Uruguay between 2007 and 2013 from the perspective of a curious observer. “The periscope, with [its] power to look without being noticed, becomes the ideal of a photographer, an ‘alter ego’ whose lens could capture everything, without interfering with anything, just observing freely, without restrictions,” Diniz said in a statement about the work. The grainy black-and-white images in Periscope include people, buildings, boats, the horizon, the sky, and the sea, shot from the surface of the water.

Periscope (Livaria Madalena, 2014), produced by Iatã Cannabrava, was designed by Ekaterina Kholmogorova and edited by Editora Terceiro Nome and Editora Madalena in São Paulo. “The book’s layout was developed considering the concept of fluidity in order to pass various sensations as the lack of balance, dizziness, tension, harmony, the continuous movement of the sea,” Diniz told PDN via email.