Portraits of a young artist

Presence and absence, a body that appears and disappears while the hands keep moving and the soul dances. A breath stopped by the camera, the apnea, and all human fragilities are suspended. For a moment, Sian is there; she then leaves before another photograph can be taken. She hides behind the plants and the windows, in the creases of the wind, looking for a canvas to paint, for an emotion to shape. 

Sian Gourlay is a young artist I had the big pleasure to meet thanks to the collective exhibition “Fourteen” we worked on together. She recently graduated in Fine Art at the Brookes University of Oxford. Her use of different media, from painting to photography, from performance to sculpture, allows her to better express the complexity of human feelings. The portraits we took together take inspiration from the concepts behind her art: the vulnerability of existence, as Sian would say, and the beauty of it.

©2022 Flavia Catena

Female photographers: Aurelija Karaliunaite

Long red hair, combed by the wind; a gentle smile and curious eyes: Aurelija moves in front of my camera with confidence and grace, like a perfect Pre-Raphaelite model. Not only her look and attitude make her the ideal Gabriele Rossetti’s muse, but also the emotions she expresses with her movements and natural poses. What she calls “the eternal beauty of sadness and unrest” is visible in every portraits we took and most of all in her beautiful work.
The women in her photos – she is often one of them – are vulnerable yet passionated, heroines fighting to be themselves, to keep their inner world uncorrupted. Here is the magic that Aurelija so much tries to capture, the magic of beauty and uniqueness she has always seen and chased, since she started taking photos as a teenager in Lithuania.
Experimenting first with friends, and immortalising the beauty of nature, her roots in the photography soil started growing and making her passion and her art flourish. After a few years spent in Edinburgh, now Aurelija Karaliunaite is a full time portrait and fashion photographer based in Oxford whose talent I encourage you to discover. Browsing among her photographs, you’ll find yourself immersed in a secret place where the mind rests among the trees and the soul flies wild above the fields.

Aurelija’s website: https://karaliunaite.com. Aurelija’s Instagram: @akaraliunaite.

Panarea – A small paradise in the Mediterranean sea

Perhaps because I was born on an island, being surrounded by the sea make me feel protected, at peace; the world which we associate with worries, duties, lack of freedom, is so far away that the sunlight on the horizon has already dispersed its traces.

Despite attracting many tourists every summer, Panarea, one of the seven islands in the Aeolian Archipelago, offered me the relaxation I had so much yearned for in the past year. I spent there a few days in July, and I honestly dreamed of moving to one of its white houses immersed in the Mediterranean scrub. The dazzling light reflected by their walls seemed to clean the mind from any thought, while the sea, visible at the end of every narrow path, invited me for a daily bathe. Swimming felt like coming to life; it was regenerating, as much as admiring the sunrise from the top of some cliff, writing poems, and taking photos for myself only, for my own pleasure.

The joy of collecting memories like rare shells: that is my personal heaven, something I look for when I travel. And Panarea gave me that; it even returned some lost hope to my heart.

Spring photo-shoots 2021

What month is this, what season? Both the pandemic and this unusually dark and cold spring have upset my mind, so much that my sense of time seems lost. And here I am, at the end of May, realising I have not posted anything since last year (I have a new writing blog, though, where I share my Italian short stories @flaviacatena.storie)! To say the truth, with the lockdown I was very restricted with the kind of photos I could take (nature still offered me some great subject), and jobs I could do, but let me share something beautiful I still had the opportunity to create a couple of months ago.

The first images you’ll see come from a fashion campaign done for Rasha Kashou Couture. Rasha is an amazing bridal designer based in Oxfordshire. All her dresses are handmade, bedspoke, and sustainable. Next are the photos taken for the talented Ewa for EKProject, a vegan, ethical jewellery brands that, as for Rasha Kashou, I very much recommend you to follow and support.

My gratitude goes to all those people who have believed in me during these months. Life is getting slowly back to normal, but all of you helped me seeing the light behind this still cloudy sky.

Rasha Kashou Couture – Model: Zahra Aliyyah, make up artist: Teryne Make up, location: Primrose hill farm

EKProject Jewellery – Models: Martha Grace, Bethan Ellis

2020 Fashion work

We are finally close to the end of this surreal, destabilising and stressful year. I won’t repeat how these past months have affected my work or personal life, but I simply want to share some fashion images I had the joy and fortune to create before the second wave of the pandemic prevented me again from shooting. Let me also wish you a 2021 full of the happiness, the health, the strength this year has stolen from your life. Let the hope fill your heart always!

©2020 Flavia Catena

From TOFT Winter Collection with model Dene Moore

From Kintsugi Clothing collection with egyptologist and Oxford university professor Elizabeth Frood

From I’mdividual 2020 Clothing collection with model Martina Sukupova

Martha – Natural beauty portraits

“I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run.” Henry David Thoreau

It was all about natural beauty, soft light raining from a dark cloudy sky, and relaxed and interesting conversations, the photo-shoot done with the beautiful Martha. And now that I look at the images again, and share them with you, I like to believe that I perhaps managed to capture what’s inside all our hearts, in this still difficult year: a bit of hope. Do you agree?

Model: Martha Grace @marthagracesc

©2020 Flavia Catena

Portraits of Bethan

I still have mixed feelings about planning and working on personal projects, being the earthquake that is shaking the world (of course the present pandemic) a threat we have not learned how to deal with yet. Because of this and because I was luckily busy with commissions, I organised very few test shoots this autumn so far. The one I am sharing with you is the first done after over a month away from the camera (excluding when I used it as a tourist in Italy), with the idea to capture portraits that could look as natural as possible. Editing was also kept at its minimum and the model was barely wearing any make up. I believe that, especially in a time like this, simplicity, honesty, even in photography, is what we need more.

Model: Bethan Ellis

Portraits at Oxford University parks – Tobi

August is here already, but despite the heat, the bright days and a closet full of linen dresses, I keep fighting against that feeling you get when missing something. And I miss summer. I need to wake up and be greeted by the sea, I need to smell orange blossoms and jasmine’s flowers, to pick some fresh sweet fruit from a tree and eat it, and get to sleep with the window open over a deserted field. The lockdown brought lot of nostalgia in my life, and photography, when I have the chance to work, helps me connect with the present, pushing the past away for a little while.

A few weeks ago, I met and photographed a lovely model based in Oxford, Tobi. We walked around Oxford University parks, and discovered a magic hidden spot I had never seen before, where tall, emerald grass was bowing to the wind, under whispering trees. Can you imagine, as I do looking at the photographs, a fairy moving from beam to beam, in a white long dress?

Model: Tobi Stevens

©2020 Flavia Catena

 

Blue velvet – Portraits of Emelia

One month has passed since I did my first photo-shoot post lockdown. I was excited and worried at the same time, as working at a safe distance and yet dedicating the same amount of attention to the details seemed not as easy as it may sound. Yet, I faced the challenge and the outdoor world, certain that having someone again in front of my camera, someone to share ideas and to create with would have made the job pleasant in the end.

I had met Emelia, the lovely young lady I photographed, last winter. We went to a photography exhibition, in Oxford, and started discussing about how to collaborate (she is a great photographer as well and a writer, so we have many interests in common). At the time, I still had not bought the velvet fabric used for the shoot; after testing it first at home, I knew I wanted Emelia’s beautiful face captured in front of it. I did not know then that she had the perfect vintage dress – from the 70s – that would match its colour.

It was somehow like swimming in the sea staring at all that blue through my lens, and taking photos came to me as the most natural thing. Despite the distancing, the face mask, and some funny moments (the wind knocked down the backdrop a few times), I felt alive again and happy. I have never taken for granted what I do and what I have, but I believe I will cherish times like this even more from now on.

Model: Emelia Mac (https://www.poetryofthecity.co.uk/)

©2020 Flavia Catena

Nature’s Symphony – Photographs in quarantine

“All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.”
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

I used to photograph wild roses, butterflies and birds when I first started spending time with a camera (not really a fancy or a professional one), walking curiously around gardens and parks, in Rome. It was a happy time, that, a time of exploration, of wonder and creation. Somehow, despite the sadness and loneliness we are all experiencing now, I feel similar emotions and desires are filling my days. And infact, here I am, again, taking photos to flowers and insects, browsing among the clouds of the sky and the branches of the trees, asking the nature for a bit of her strenght and wisdom.

©2020 Flavia Catena