Collections of photographs taken from around the world.

Photography

Often when we think of beauty, we will think of it in terms of physical attributes; quantifiable or measurable features that are immediately recognizable - things such as proportions, size and color.  But often times when my eye draws the curves of a figures form - when I follow arms as they wrap around ones chest or feel the tension in ones stomach as the legs are drawn upward in the fetal position – I am compelled by the beauty that comes not from the external, but the haunting beauty of loss that is part of life’s rhythm.  The beauty is in the rawness of the emotion.

Fragmented

Deviant

"You are all so serious. I bring laughter, joy, and warmth into the world.  The sun is yellow, the moon is yellow, and the stars are yellow.  Every time you look at a sunflower, the whole world starts to smile.  Without me there would be no fun."
Legend of the colors
Based upon a Native American Legend

The Yellow Collection

Imagine how it feels to run your hand over the flesh of another human being, to feel the roundness of the thigh, the buttock, the chest, to massage the arch of a foot.  To run the fingertips along the side of another’s face and feel their expression, to know the feeling of another person doing the same to ourselves.  To experience another person that deeply both physically and psychologically is to at once understand the uniqueness of someone’s individual experience and to be completely and fully human.  It is simultaneously an intimate personal experience, and ubiquitous.  This is what it means to feel a connection with each other and ourselves.

Connection

In beginning a piece, I must slowly get to know it.  I must allow the piece to reveal its story and its spirit to me.  As my hand and eye move over the contours of the form, I begin to feel how the piece is expressing its essence.  A piece will communicate its personal narrative of strength, vulnerability, power and liberation as I build the fullness of the lungs in an inhale, as I carve out the hollow in the nape of the neck, or as I shape the muscles of the back as it arches.  In this way I can become one with the piece. 

Contours

"Finally, INDIGO spoke, much more quietly than all the others, but with just as much determination: 'Think of me. I am the color of silence. You hardly notice me, but without me you all become superficial. I represent thought and reflection, twilight and deep water. You need me for balance and contrast, for prayer and inner peace'."
Legend of the Colors
Based upon a Native American Legend

Claudette Bleijenberg