In the book The Immense Journey (1957) by American anthropologist Loren Eiseley (1907-1977) is a wonderful quote--"If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water." Twenty-eight years before Eiseley's book, photographer Ralph Steiner (1899-1986) created a short paean to water, a 12-minute silent film entitled "H20". He, incidentally was a cinematographer for the fine Pare Lorentz documentary, "The Plow That Broke the Plains" (1936).
Steiner's "H2O" film has a very brief introduction with rain the focus; it quickly becomes more abstract. Steiner is obviously fascinated by the remarkable kinetic action of water and how the motion created an endless variety of water reflections. This occupies half of the film. He then follows up with some brief textural aspects of the water, and finally ends with the effects of light on the ever-moving liquid--the shimmering, glowing, sparkling. With pattern merging into pattern, amazing abstractions appear, startling in their beauty. The film is an aquaphile's delight.
As an amateur still photographer, I've taken numerous water abstraction photos. I would love to see what a cinematographer might do with these water features in color. It's easy to envision a kaleidoscopic short which features the patterns created by reflections, the textures and the impact of light. The poem "God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot" from the Leonard Cohen novel Beautiful Losers would aptly describe such an effort and does indeed describe what Steiner did in 1929.