Yulia Artemyeva
Yulia Artemyeva
Russian Federation Yulia Artemyeva MFIAP Authors

Ballerina and flowers

A  flower is  a  symbol of  perfect beauty, purity, youth, and fragile brevity.  

  Romantic tradition. Mimesis.     

Womanhood represents itself in  a  moment, a  swift gesture. What lasts longer  — a  flower’s angle or  a  gesture of  a   ballerina? The culture of  humanity is  random reproduction of  meaningful events. Nature creates an  impulse and i nspiration, an  ideal, though it  has to  be  held fixed within the culture.   Comparing women to  flowers is  one of  the traditional motives in  European as  well as  Asian culture. In  this photo  project this likeness is  made absolute with the help of  visual mimesis, almost identical imitation of  a  flower’s  shape through a  gesture.    

Choosing a  ballerina to  be  the centerpiece of  this shooting is  metaphysical: womanhood as  an  ideal can  be  captured only by  imagination or  in  its artistic representation. At  the same time, the conceptual field  of  womanhood is  huge and complicated. The image of  a  dancer may be  interpreted as  a  manifestation of  a  better  world, close to  a  fairy or  a  genius, or  it  can be  eroticized and lowered. However, a  consistent iconic application  of  both traditional images brings photography closer to  language, a  hieroglyphic script where each consecutive  symbol clarifies the previous  one. The same way each pair of  photos should be  seen as  an  integrated message  where the associations for the flower in  this visual micro-imagery cut off or  clarify part of  the meanings which  emerge in  the viewer’s perception in  connection with each image of  a  ballerina: her posture, gestures, the tones  of  the photo etc.   

Womanhood breaks through from the ideal world into the real world through a  gesture, a  word, or  a  sign. And  if  a  camera captures a  gesture of  the priestess-artist almost passively, the choice of  angle for capturing the beauty  of  nature so  that it  becomes an  artefact requires a  lot of  heuristic effort on  the part of  the photo artist. A  ballerina’s  gesture, so  swift in  reality, becomes as  long-lasting as  a  flower’s angle, which could have been left unnoticed  without the attention of  a  photo camera.

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