Female tenderness

“Female tenderness, that wonderful power, which invisible and omnipotent lives in those fragile beings, escapes through them in most varied shapes, and creates and breaks down lives and fates around it.”
—
Jovan Ducic, Serbian writer and poet.

Often, in a nude photograph, a woman’s body is represented as an “ornament”, in other words as an example of harmony and loveliness, without pretencions to show any states of mind or emotions through the photograph. Getting away from that approach, I wanted to express gentleness and power through these photographs, but a whole new set of other states, which each one of us experiences. The nude body, much like our inner “I”, is always exposed to the sharp cuts of light and shadow, which hide and erase pieces of ourselves. We are in a constant discrepancy with reality which we cannot change and to which we gradually conform – just like the curves of the body conform to the firm outlines of stone. But it is this conformity and shaping according to the space around us, that leads to the gradual loss of identity, and to the point when nothing but outlines remain, which try and escape from the pressure of their inalterable and cold surrounding and find a way out. — Aleksandra Leković

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