ELIZABETH ALDERLIESTEN 
1972, Dordrecht

“For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length - and there I travel looking, looking breathlessly.” 
― Carlos Castaneda, The teachings of Don Juan.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Most people navigate between wanting to be seen and a chameleonic merging with their surroundings. 

I aim to approach this tension from a female perspective and translate it into a type of beauty that can temper the harshness of the outside world. Starting with an attempt to represent the ineffable, and perhaps also based on nostalgia, I set out to explore femininity and nature. 

I consider nature to be a mirror for self-reflection, in which the noise of everyday life may dissolve, if only for a moment, and from which new insights can arise. Beauty guides my thoughts and my emotions. 

Doing analog work by hand helps to achieve quiet and focus, while the slowing down of time yields clearer perception. I see photography as a fitting medium for disclosure, with which to represent metamorphoses from invisibility to visibility. 

Finally, my photographs are images in themselves rather than images of something. I see them as free and poetic visual rhymes that may elicit stories in the viewer’s imagination.