Dance has always been a big part of Yulia Artemyeva‘s life. The photographer spent the majority of her childhood and youth involved with ballet. Thanks to a clever photo project, Artemyeva was able to relive memories of her youth as she created a series that juxtaposed ballet dancers and flowers.
The innovative black and white photographs place graceful dancers next to blooms that appear to mimic their movements. It's a wonderful display of how art and nature are more connected than we think. Artemyeva first photographed each dancer, asking them to create different, dynamic movements. Then, the real challenge came—finding a flower to match the pose. The Russian photographer often went through multiple samples until she found the exact gesture that she was after.
While the first clear comparison between the dancers and flowers is the graceful pose, there are other symbols to be found within these images. Both flowers and ballet dancers are quite fragile, in the sense that professional dancers see their careers end while they are quite young, just as flowers lose their petals quickly.
In creating the work, Artemyeva hopes that people will learn to appreciate the beauty that surrounds them and to stimulate them to look deeper during their daily lives for this beauty. “Try to look at the world through the eyes of a child,” she tells My Modern Met. “It is important to rediscover it every day!”
Personally, the work brought her full circle from her days of dancing as a child. “With this project, I lived this part of my life anew,” she confesses. “This photo project is a therapy for me, it closed the Gestalt. So the inspiration came from the memories of the past.”
Yulia Artemyeva's innovative photo series compares ballet dancers and flowers.
Each dancer is paired with a bloom that mimics her movements.
