David Doubilet was born in New York in 1946 and started taking underwater photographs while still a young boy. He began snorkelling off the coast of New Jersey at the age of eight and at twelve, he was taking his first underwater shots using a Brownie Hawkeye wrapped in a rubber bag. During this period, summer holidays were spent diving to photograph the seabed off the coast of New Jersey and working as a diving instructor on Andros Island in the Bahamas.

David Doubilet published his first report in National Geographic in 1972 and since 1976 he has been working steadily with the magazine, which has been the most constant supporter of his work.

After graduating from Boston University (1970) he began to work as a freelance photographer in 1971, publishing his first important story "The Red Sea’s Garden of Eels", in National Geographic. To date he has published more than sixty articles in this important American magazine (which now has national editions in many countries throughout the world, Italy included). His most recent work for National Geographic appeared in February 2002; it is dedicated to Cuba and entitled "Cuba Reefs, A Last Caribbean Refuge".

In Tasmania, New Zealand and Australia he has dived along the Great Barrier Reef in the waters off the Northwest coast and in the South to photograph the salt water crocodiles, the great white shark, the life cycle and fishing of pearls and the box jellyfish (Chironex fleckeri), which is considered to be the most deadly and poisonous of all sea creatures. He was the first to discover the lakes filled with mysterious small jellyfish in the archipelago of the Palau Islands and he has also documented the wealth of life forms in the coral reefs of Indonesia and New Guinea.

He has recently completed a special project on the great white shark, the gigantic predator of Jaws, in collaboration with Peter Benchley, the author of the best-selling novel that inspired the successful Spielberg film of the same name.

Doubilet has also shot reports on the wrecks of ships that were sunk during the Second World War, from Pearl Harbour (Hawaii) to the Midway Islands in the Southeast Pacific.

He has also published numerous books, including Light in the Sea: An Undersea Journey (Thomasson and Grant), Water, Light and Time (Phaidon) to which the Verona exhibition is dedicated, and The Great Barrier Reef (volume in progress).

His awards include the prestigious Sara Prize in 1969, the Explorers Club Lowell Thomas Award, and the Lennart Nilsson Award in 2001. He is also an honorary member of the Royal Photographic Society of London and the International Diving Hall of Fame in the Cayman Islands.