Jaye Selga had built a successful side career photographing portraits of women and families, when the birth of her son upended everything.
“After becoming a mum I nearly gave photography up altogether; it had been a chaotic year, but the universe had other plans,” says Jaye.
With no spare room left at home to shoot indoors, instead she began taking portrait and glam shoots outdoors along the peninsula coastline. To satisfy her creative side, she then set out to try something different: photographing mermaids.
A search online led her to Marianna the Mermaid, a professional performer who agreed to model for her.
“After that first shoot at Rosebud beach I was obsessed,” says Jaye. That single afternoon “opened up an entire world of learning, opportunities, friendships that eventually led me to my first exhibition, and into competitions,” she says.
That obsession grew into a distinct visual language built on breath-hold, fabric, movement and natural light, with portraits that sit somewhere between photography and painting. These days Jaye moves between three identities – mother, registered nurse and underwater fine art photographer – and all three are threaded through Bloom, her debut exhibition, which showed at Oak Hill Gallery in Mornington in June.
Water has always meant home for Jaye. She grew up in Roxas City, the self-declared seafood capital of the Philippines, and has lived on the Mornington Peninsula since September 2011.
“I’ve never lived far from a body of water,” says Jaye.
The only exception was a stint studying in Bendigo; landlocked and hard to bear. “I missed the smell of salty air, and the comfort of knowing I was close to the ocean,” she says.
Most of Jaye’s shoots take place in a hired pool rather than open water. The bay is reserved for subjects who are strong, confident swimmers, often professional mermaids trained to move in tails, or experienced underwater models. Every session begins with a risk assessment and an unhurried safety briefing before anyone gets in the water, a discipline she credits partly to her day job.
“Even if I wasn’t a nurse, safety would still be the number one priority in underwater photography,” says Jaye.
Her clinical training sharpens these instincts further. Knowing advanced life support and reading a face for the first flicker of fatigue or discomfort has become second nature both on shoots and at home with her child. “If I deem a shoot unsafe for anyone involved, I won’t do it,” she says.
“I missed the smell of salty air, and the comfort of knowing I was close to the ocean
Bloom was shaped first by becoming a mother, and by the awareness that comes with wanting children and vulnerable people to be safe in the world.
“The work began with a question I kept returning to: what becomes possible when a person is safe, protected and nurtured?” says Jaye.
She wanted the series to acknowledge the realities of child trafficking, abuse and exploitation, without confronting viewers with them directly. Rather than images of sorrow, Jaye chose to focus on the other side of that conversation: the possibility of healing, softness, confidence and beauty when someone is held in safety.
“Water can give life, but it can also take it away. Underwater, humans are vulnerable; it is not an environment where we naturally thrive,” says Jaye. “But with guidance, trust and care the people I photograph are able to relax. They can appear calm, serene and almost weightless because they know they are safe.”
“That is what Bloom is really about,” says Jaye. “It is my answer to that original question: when someone is safe they do not just survive; they can soften, trust, open and bloom.”
A portion of every sale from the exhibition was donated to the Alannah & Madeline Foundation, the Australian charity working to protect children and young people from violence and trauma, a practical extension of the dedication running underneath the whole series.
Bloom is also, by Jaye’s own account, the first body of work that belongs entirely to her. Earlier in her career, her photography was shaped by what clients wanted rather than what she wanted to say.
“I gave myself permission to stop chasing what I thought people wanted from me, and instead follow the visual language that felt most natural to me,” says Jaye.
Getting the work onto a peninsula gallery wall took persistence. With no formal exhibition history behind her, Jaye sent applications to galleries across the region, many of which were booked out years in advance or simply did not reply. Oak Hill Gallery was the first to agree, and Jaye says there was something fitting about her debut landing on the same coastline that drew her to Australia in the first place.
The women in Bloom’s images are largely friends; people Jaye trusted to understand what the project was trying to say, and to hold the stillness an underwater shoot demands. “Building that trust”, she says, “happens slowly, in the run-up to a shoot and the close attention paid to breath and body once underwater.”
Once the show opened, Jaye noticed that many visitors were first drawn to the colour, the fabric, the strange calm on her subjects’ faces, and only later asked how the images were made. “I hope they realise that the beauty is not just decoration, it is part of the message.”
Bloom closed at the end of June, but Jaye is not treating it as a finished chapter so much as a beginning. A new series, The Red Ballroom, is due for release in 2027. It is still shot underwater but pitched as bolder and more theatrical than its predecessor, with what Jaye describes as a stronger sense of courage, visibility and transformation. A third body of work, more mythical and whimsy, is aimed at 2028, continuing to explore the emotional language of water, movement and the body.
While Bloom asked what becomes possible when someone feels safe enough to soften and open, Jaye’s next work suggests she already knows: the courage to be seen.
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