FANNY MENCEUR

 
I have always been drawn to beautiful sad songs when I am feeling blue….like it’s my way of getting rid of it. Going deeper and deeper in that despair is to me kind of sublime, maybe even courageous. But when I need a fast and furious shot of optimism, I listen to “I’m so beautiful” by Divine. And that always makes me think that music and humanity are not only what New Order used to write: “Power, corruption and lies”, some ready-to-listen, some comfort, some Sofia Coppola, some cool, some chic. There is another way. The rebellious loud one that shakes it all up. The one that says no to anything clean and sugar-coated but yes to spontaneity. This is what Divine embodies and I find this a very clever and subversive definition of Beauty. This song makes one smile and want to love the whole planet (at least for one day).
 
 

 

 

KELLY LYNN JONES

The ocean.  It is vast, mysterious and reminds me how nothing and everything matters.
 
 
 

ASA MADER

Here’s an excerpt which summarizes what I attempt to do with images, in words… From the film “Meticulous Perfection“  by Katerina Jebb.

>>>Beauty is more of a light than an object.<<<

“If we journey back in time, the first thing we encounter is the Greek word for beauty.

Kalos — the sudden apparition of a form in an unexpected place.

A form appears where we would not expect it to appear.

This is beauty.

Certainly beauty is not an object.

We do not wonder in front of an object, this is not real wonder.

To reduce beauty to an object annihilates it.

Beauty reduced to an object becomes the profanation of beauty.

Still there is something in us that wants to grasp beauty, take and possess it.

And this how beauty escapes us.

It dissolves in our hands, like water trickling through our fingers.

And beauty is no longer ours.

If beauty is not an object, then what is it?

It is a light, a clearing, an opening that suddenly unfolds in our life, and allows us to see things in a new way.

Beauty is more of a light than an object.

A light that allows us to see all other objects — and also ourselves.

This is why beauty is above and beyond being an aesthetic phenomenon.

Beauty is knowledge.

Because it allows us to know ourselves and the world in a new way.”

See full film featuring Italian philosopher Guido Brivio (University of Turin) in the film “Meticulous Perfection“  by Katerina Jebb as part of the series 8 days of Persol.

Featured image: “Ceci n’est pas une femme” screenshot from the film “Shapes and Design“ © Asa Mader.

 

EMILY GAMBADE

 
What is beautiful…is a surprise. Something that is never set, never defined, never guaranteed. Out of the box, out of this world, out of breath.
It lives on someone’s face, like a broken tooth shining through a wide wild smile; inside the wrinkles of a grand mother’s hand, telling stories of life and a lifetime of stories; in a cloud of sea on a sandy beach, in the middle of the South African west coast. Kissed by the ocean, left lying on the shore, sliding back where it belongs. 

SASHA DUERR

 

 

 

 

For me, Beauty is often planted in the now. Grown in the process. How just a moment can encompass a memory. A glimmer of being able to see the visible in the invisible.

As an artist, a plant dyer and a mother, I am often wowed by moments of indescribable beauty…

It can be witnessing the wonder of plant color, saturated true hues, gathered forward from the mundane and simmering possibility…

It can be celebrating the wonder, a unique opening, the stunning present, the hold your breath “aha” that answers you in rich golds, greens and effervescent yellows.

Beauty can be questions and resolve you may have never seen or felt before with your eyes or your being in the same way…

Or it could  be the moment when you see yourself and your whole future in your children taking in an aroma with your eyes closed in a bouquet from a garden that used to be cement.

KATHRYN DAW

Beauty is… 
something that is felt. 
It is alive. 
It has heart. 
It is love, acceptance and the ability to receive…
 
It is flawed, broken, bent and damaged…
It is forgiving and resilient.
 
It is deeply rooted in nature. Amongst its beauty, I feel most beautiful and alive…
Trees epitomize all that is beautiful.
 
 

ANNE-MARGREET HONING

What is beautiful to me is beauty of the ephemeral, beauty of the infinite. I love when Roland Barthes says: “What photography can indefinitely reproduce happens only once”.

And the poem “Beauty Bright” by William Blake

Sleep!Sleep!

Sleep!Sleep! Beauty bright,

Dreaming o’er the joys of night;

Sleep!Sleep!in the sleep

Little sorrow sit and weep.

Sweet Babe, in thy face
Soft desires I can trace,
Secret joys and secret smiles,
Little pretty infant wiles.

As thy softest limbs I feel,
Smiles as of the morning steal
O’er thy cheek, and o’er thy breast
Where thy little heart does rest.

O! the cunning wiles that creep
In thy little heart asleep.
When thy little heart does wake
Then the dreadful lightnings break,

From thy cheek and from thy eye,
O’er the youthful harvests nigh.
Infant wiles and infant smiles
Heaven and Earth of peace beguiles.  

   

 

HANNAH SOWD

To me, balance is beautiful: the perfect combination of strength and restraint. The exact moment when opposing forces share a powerful moment of stillness.
The idea of balance is the basis of my work as a skin care therapist, all systems must work together to allow the skin to be beautiful.
I took this photo while sitting in traffic on the freeway in Los Angeles, California; the full moon insists on being part of the landscape, shining thru the layers of man-made pollution and illuminating the sprawling city below.

HELENE SANANIKONE

 

When Caroline asked me that question, I felt lost! A peaceful water painting? From Hokusai

The hugest monument made for love? Picture from Guillaume Géraud
 
 
A fusion between humanity and nature? Picture from Yann Arthus-Bertrand

I feel that Beauty is everywhere, we only need to remember and preserve it.

ESTHER VOISIN

 

Life is beautiful.
And Beauty is what you carry within yourself or not, if  you are able to see and feel it within you. Express it and share it. 
That sentence from Thoreau makes the most sense of that concept: “It is not what you look at that matters, it is what you see.”
 
 

 

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