Elinor Carucci, perceiving beauty
Looking at and admiring beautiful things is part of what we seek as photographers, and we do all we can to discover them. We then struggle to find original ways to photograph the beautiful. Some few photographers reach farther by looking closer, so that they perceive beauty by feeling it, and they photograph the mundane life around them to reveal the beauty that is often ignored by our tendency to desensitize from what is known to us, our life, our people, our environment.
Elinor Carucci has been photographing the intimacy of her family and friends since she was quite young. The result are marvelous photographs. With her work she tell us to perceive beauty by feeling it. A lesson to all of us so that perhaps we try to overcome the desensitization from the beauty that forms our own life.
My mother was the first person I ever photographed and I still take pictures of her obsessively. Quite literally, in more than one way, she was – she is – my natural point of origin. My connection to the world. I used to think that the struggles with her, as well as the sense of closeness, security and warmth, the whole way I related to her during childhood, would somehow naturally end with the end of childhood. Perhaps they were transformed, elevated to other levels. But in many ways, they never lost their power over me. - Elinor Carucci
