Personal freedom where the sea meets the sky

"The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: We are all in the same boat."

Gazing at the 16 large-format images of Yiorgis Yerolymbos' latest exhibition at Skoufa Gallery in central Athens brought to mind this quote by the late French oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau. The pictures are like gateways to our shared marine kingdom and feature sharp horizontal lines separating sea from sky - an archetypical dichotomy for all men.

The title of the exhibition is "Mare Liberum." The term is associated with Hugo Grotius, who was the first to formulate the principle that beyond a certain distance from the coast, the sea is international territory and all nations are free to use it for seafaring trade.

A keen skipper, Yerolymbos has long been drawn to the sea. In recent years, however, the photographer and...