Savoring.
“I’m in love with the beauty of the world that we live in. Taking a walk in the great outdoors, I’m always amazed by people seemingly forgetting how beautiful life can be. And by life I do not only mean being human but also the landscapes that surround us. The situations that define us – the moments of happiness, despair, uncertainty or contentment – we do not only find them in our relationships or inside of us. They are also found in our environment. When you are in a decisive place at a decisive time, you can feel that nature mirrors those special times in your life. It mirrors our emotions, and if you let it happen you can get carried away and become one with the world. I’m savoring life, I’m savoring the beauty of mankind and of nature. So naturally, that is what my work is about.”
Once I was biking in Maastricht I had the pleasure to read on a poster on the window near Emmaplein with written in Italian “ The most important things in life are not things” (wise Italians :P).
I truly agree and I bet most of you have different values that makes your life special and they are not material! Leah’s photos triggered me specifically by the fact that they highlight these moments: enjoyable needed freedom-emotion landscape, deep meaningful gaze, and ‘precious’ feelings that we sometimes forget to savor and we can connect with. I loved her sensibility in connecting the humans feeling and interlock them into the perfect landscape.
Unfortunately sometimes we are so busy in thinking about ‘what is next’ that we forget to enjoy and live the present. Through Leah’s words
“We interact, we have relationships, we bond because we are family, friends or lovers. We look into mirrors and see that we change, always. We search for a purpose; sometimes we’re stuck, sometimes we’re still looking, sometimes we think we found it. And sometimes we find people or stories and absorb them, pretend for a while to be someone different. As a photographer, I took on the role of an observer and looked for the stories other people and certain sceneries could tell me. Photography is freezing one fleeting, special moment so it lasts forever. That one moment, being fixed in a frame, gives you the opportunity to study it, to plunge into the given situation, to feel the atmosphere created by the pictured people and the photographer.”
In particular for the graduation project Floating in Life she focused on the feeling when “Two people turning their backs on the obsessive need to control everything nowadays to live in the present and experience the feeling of freedom. A feeling that can be liberating and frightening at the same time.” A common feeling to most of us, that’s why we can al particularly connect with, and create our own story.
I was having a wonderful time and the whole world opened up before me because I had no dreams. Jack Kerouac
“I chose to be a photographer because I want to explore the fleeting moments that define us as human beings.” I do think, that so far her creations hold these precious moments we should remember to savor every day; you can connect and discover Leah Photography’s here.
You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul. George Bernard Shaw
