Gisela S.

My love of Photography started in my teens. I remember being 15 and feeling so disappointed with my drawings. Photography felt natural and effortless. The use of natural light and a camera was very freeing and satisfying. The magic of the Darkroom came later and the awareness of how poetic this drawing, painting with light was on my imagination and creativity.

I started in the late 80s, early 90s with my father's 35mm Zenith Camera, then a Minolta X-300s and in the early 00s a Nikon FM3A, my camera till today.

I now also have a tiny digital camera, a Sony DSC-W30, that I try to adapt to my needs, even if not always successfully. 

35mm film and, in more recent years, a macro lens have been my main tools.

In 2005, inspired by black and white transparency film, Agfa Scala 200x and Lidewij Edelkoort's Bloom magazine and, going back to favourite themes

- flowers of every kind, shape and size and our connection with nature -,

I asked friends and acquaintances:

"If you were a Plant or Flower, which one would you be?!" ...

I had to complete the project in early 2008 due to the difficulties of finding a Lab to develop the film ... (last film developed at ARKA Laboratoire in Paris).

 

Now, so many years later, those images have pushed me to finally try to create a sort of digital portfolio.

What you find here is the beginning of an attempt to do just that ...

 

I would like to mention 3 teachers/tutors that had a big impact during my time as a Photography student:

Jorge Viana Basto and (Luís) Miguel Ferraz, in Portugal, for their technical precision, energy and encouragement.

Beverley Carruthers, in England, for her accurate reading of my mind's eye and her sensibility to my ideas and images. Her guidance was precious and unique. My images found a new inner strength. Ideas, emotions, feelings, thoughts, dreams became essential to create and explore real and made-up landscapes. With intuition as my main drive I embarked on a journey to represent and explore the senses and all phenomena charged with wonder.