A photographic exhibition is giving a rare and bizarre insight into the mysterious world of real-life mermaids.Mermaids, that is, who are humans, but who choose to live their lives as the mythical underwater sea creatures.And they love it.Photographer Annie Collinge spent three days last year at the Weeki Wachee Springs, one of the oldest roadside attractions in Florida, where the Mermaid Theater has drawn visitors for decades.Navy veteran, Newton Perry, first opened an underwater theater first opened at the springs in 1947.It had its heyday in 1959, when ABC purchased it and built a new theater 16 feet below the surface, according to Slate. Thirty-five mermaids were employed then, and they performed eight shows a day. Today, the springs are now designated part of a state park. During the warmer months seats are often filled, but in February, according to Collinge, only a few people were in the audience. This gave her more of an opportunity to photograph the mermaids, but it also meant the park looked pretty deserted. ‘Generally my work is sort of a contrast between something that's something slightly humorous and something that's slightly bleak. Unintentionally, that's how I see things,’ Collinge said.She said she knew her choice to snap photographs of the women would ‘be a good project because the mermaids were very open’.The mermaids perform two shows, The Little Mermaid and Fish Tails, a few times a day.They use hidden underwater breathing hoses to maintain the fantastical illusion of being able to live underwater.The park is open all year long to visitors, but Collinge said the park attracted a ‘strange mix of people’.‘It has a vintage feel. There were people with their children and lots of slightly weird men who quite fancied mermaids.’According to Collinge, the mermaids love their jobs. She said many of them grew up in the area and worked in the park for years in various capacities.A few years ago, when the park was threatened with closure, the mermaids started a campaign called ‘Save Our Tails’ to keep it open.Collinge’s exhibition, Annie Collinge: The Underwater Mermaid Theater, is on view alongside another exhibition, The Mythology of Florida, until January 5 at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans.The theme park also offers lessons on how to be a mermaid, learning how to take gulps of air from the hose, balancing the pressure on their ears and sinuses while being buffeted by a 12-mile-an-hour current.Mermaids do exist, but in the form of a rare disease which most babies do not survive. A girl from Kennebunkport in Maine was born with 'mermaid syndrome’, also known as sirenomelia, which meant that she had only one partially working kidney, no lower colon or genital organs and legs fused from the waist down. Shiloh Pepin lived till she was 10 years old after having become a sensation on internet and television shows, including the Oprah Winfrey Show. She died in 2009. (dailymail.co.uk)ANN.Az