In a special photo essay, the creative spirit behind Boerne’s Paula VM Photography shares her photographs, inspiration and approach to artmaking.
Photos and text by Paula VM
I’ve always been keenly interested in people, books, art, and movies.
As a child I would watch old black-and-white movies. I could sit and watch people for long periods of time and loved art.
A voracious reader, I immersed myself in books that often were wildly inappropriate for my age. I was exposed to many different types of people and peculiar situations that shaped the way I perceived the world.
Consequently, I created a rich fantasy life and had a strong flair for the dramatic – much to my mother’s dismay. I would pretend to be someone else and work out entire storylines. Then, I’d set about to put them into daily practice.
Exploring creativity
I have been involved in some form of art my entire life, the most prominent ones being acting and poetry. I still jot down poems to go with some of my photographs and sleep with a pen and pad on my side table, in case I need to write something that happened to pop into my mind in the middle of the night.
Photography has allowed me to keep playing, creating a world I want to see.
Although I work as a classic portrait photographer – where I form lasting relationships with my clients (mostly women and their families), I am fascinated with the power of dreams and the subconscious mind. My conceptual photographic work is driven by a desire to create a beautiful and romanticized world, another reality that I want to inhabit. Using film and digital, I shoot mood-filled female subjects, self-portraits and captivating landscapes.
In my conceptual work, I aspire to create a dream-like atmosphere in which lighting and shadows are key elements. My work changes as the seasons change. During the warmer months, I tend to create lighter, more feminine pieces of work. In colder, darker months, my work takes on an obscure tone, one that can be a bit melancholy.
Embracing the seasons
I look forward to both seasons – summer and winter – with equal enthusiasm, as each brings out different feelings and emotions that will dictate where my art goes.
I am deeply moved by beauty, the beauty of nature, beauty of the human form, the beauty of the written word, beauty of the light and the dark. One of my favorite quotes is from Friedrich Nietzsche: “There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.”
Whether working to capture heirloom portraits or experimenting with my conceptual pieces, I strive to create beauty above all. I have a deep affection for stories of heartache and pain and it probably comes through in most of my work even my lighter more feminine subjects.
I hope that people can find the beauty in the images I produce, and I hope they create a feeling of longing or nostalgia in the viewer and perhaps a sense of wonder.
Readers, learn more about Paula’s work via PaulaVMPhotography.com and Instagram or Facebook.
