Alex Kirkbride, a native New Yorker, began his underwater career as a diving instructor and divemaster at Rum Cay and San Salvador in the Bahamas. It was on the coral reefs of these islands that he learnt how to create underwater images. One visitor, the German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, influenced and encouraged him to pursue photography.

In 1985 he moved to New York City and became a photo-assistant for five years, working for a wide variety of photographers, including Albert Watson, before he started his own photographic business, specializing in underwater, travel and adventure.

Today he is an award-winning photographer with four decades of diving experience. His work has involved expeditions to some of the world’s most remote regions, including Antarctica, the Canadian High Arctic, the Amazon’s Rio Negro, and isolated islands in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

Alex has had solo gallery exhibitions in New York, London, Dubai, Estonia and Italy and lectured to audiences such as the Four Arts Society in Palm Beach, Florida and the Snowdon Photographic Society at Eton College. He has designed and taught underwater photography courses in New York City and Tartu Art College in Estonia, where he became a guest lecturer.

Alex has contributed photographs and articles to publications such as National Geographic, American Vogue, The New York Times, Travel & Leisure, Scuba Diving, Plongee and British Journal of Photography to name a few.

In 1993, he was included in the book Ocean, Photographs from the world’s greatest underwater photographers.

In 2006, Alex was made a Fellow International at the Explorers Club in New York City.

In 2007 he produced a critically acclaimed book, titled American Waters, in which he documented beautiful and rare scenes that he witnessed during a three-year aquatic study of all 50 United States. In the foreword, Jean-Michel Cousteau says, “Alex has pushed us to appreciate all water on Earth …… and dares us to think outside categories, labels, or convention. He has re-invented the medium and we thank him for that.”
It was voted one of the top 10 travel books in 2007.

In 2009, American Waters was voted “one of the eight books that changed our underwater world.”

In 2013, his second book, Lychgate – An English Country Garden, was published.

Since 2014 he has been working on multiple long-term water projects: Ice, Reef, and Animals. Some of this work is here on the website.

In 2015 Alex was named one of the “100 most inspiring underwater photographers.”

Alex resides in Hove, England, with his wife Hazel and their son, Dylan, who has inherited his father’s love of the sea.