Photography Feature: On Beauty and Age
By Sheri Wright
What is aged or overlooked can often be a source of beauty, if approached from a different perspective, one from a desire to find stories. I seek out visual tales that lay hidden among rust, abandoned places and the unique. I feel that characters develop only through weathering, that the patina of rust emotes stories and that textures are like words on the page we can feel through our eyes.
Photography, to me, is very similar to poetry, in that everything is compressed to its essence. This compression allows me to go deeply into an idea or subject, often finding that there are worlds within worlds, that beauty is not always obvious and many things are not as they may seem.
“Underworld Falls,” by Sheri Wright
In “Underworld Falls” I connect very old traditions of caves being significant places of spirituality, in that caves are often regarded as womb-like, feminine-related and thereby, deeply powerful with feminine wisdom.
“Rivets and Crust,” by Sheri Wright
“Rivets and Crust” explores how age does not mean the end of beauty, as is almost always a struggle for women in most parts of the world. We are falsely told that our worth mysteriously vanishes after a certain age. But, as youth is peeled back, it is clear to see that underneath, exists another type of beauty and vitality that can only be created through time seasoned in wisdom.
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Two-time Pushcart Prize and Kentucky Poet Laureate nominee, Sheri L. Wright is the author of six books of poetry, including the most recent, The Feast of Erasure. Wright’s award-winning photography has appeared in numerous journals, including Blood Orange Review, Prick of the Spindle, Blood Lotus Journal and Subliminal Interiors. In 2012, Ms. Wright was a contributer to the Sister Cities Project Lvlds: Creatively Linking Leeds and Louisville. Her photography has been shown across the Ohio Valley region and abroad. Currently, she is at work on her documentary film, Tracking Fire, which chronicles the worst mass-killing in LGBT history in the U.S.
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