A word from the photographer: I began on a journey of using as many moments a day as I could to become more and more the woman I am, which is to say to become aware and present with who I am and what I want at all times. It is a constant honing in if you will to my own inner life as I live my outer one. This is why I offer the "Water Nymph Sessions" it is my offering to create a space where woman can be seen, explore their desires, their bodies, their feelings with freedom. A space held with love. A space where we are one in the same. Our journeys are different perhaps and yet we are connected.
//Ashley Fincham
Go within every day and find the inner strength so that the world will not blow your candle out.
//Katherine Dunham
To truly reveal oneself requires an incredible amount of courage and vulnerability. To open the doors to ones soul, inviting others to take a look inside or even to spend a great deal of time there, seems to me, impossible. Or insane. Why would I knowingly and openly invite others to examine me and eventually criticize or condemn me. This has been the foundation for my own self-image: others will most definitely find faults - and many of them - so I am better off if I do not allow them to see me. And essentially, I do not see myself. Not truly.
From birth, women are bombarded with images - both photographic and idealistic - of what it takes to be considered beautiful or worthy of attention. An impossible standard is created and for a perfectionist like myself, an enduring encounter of a lifelong struggle with self-love ensues. A dangerous dance between dream-fueled aspirations and disappointments stemming from the inner demons, naysayers who won't even allow me to take a first step. Because the rejection will wound, fester and eventually leave ugly scars.
And even in the midst of an incredible movement of women, young and old, standing for and embracing beauty in all forms - the dismembered hearts of perversion continue to sexualize that which was never intended to be sexual. A woman's breast becomes pornographic. The curve of her hips morphs into fuel for ravenous desire. The body in all of its glorious beauty is not allowed to simply BE. It is mangled, twisted, ravaged and discarded with no consideration for the soul that accompanies it. The wounded nature of our culture steals the pure and replaces it with projections rooted in disease and disgust. And somehow, the fault becomes our own.
To have the opportunity to be vulnerable in a setting in which every imperfection is not a flaw, but a brush stroke among thousands on a masterpiece is a gift valuable beyond measure.
Where do those scars come from? Tell me me more about them. How has that shaped you as an individual? Did they provide you with strength or have they been a great source of mourning?
I'm not just asking to fill the silent void. I really want to know. It matters to me. Your story, your scars. They are important. They are part of what makes you beautiful. That beauty deserves to be painted. To be captured; recorded for others to see
. To learn by; to live by.
You are beautiful.
That beauty will translate to each soul you come across. Some will understand the translation immediately, clearly and with ease. For others, the translation will be muddled as they continue to forge through the tiring work of opening up their own internal prisons, setting themselves free. It may take five months or five years, but when they have found freedom they will look back and see the beauty for what it truly is (it continues to exist so it never changes to was). Others may die never understanding the translation - but that does not mean their experience was worthless.
We are all - our beautiful souls - in this journey together. We can choose to open our eyes and hearts to it, embracing ourselves and embracing one another in turn. Or we can stand in ignorance, shutting one another out. Keeping the healing love at bay.
Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.
//Maya Angelou
Photographs by Ashley Fincham