Anna Ellen Hamlet (SE)
Through Your Eyes I See Universe Their eyes meet as they are sitting opposite each other for twenty minutes, looking into the eyes of one another, meditating together in silence. The boundary between them is erased. The large format camera is next to Anna Ellen Hamlet, to the left, and sometimes during the meditation she takes a polaroid, but the person portrayed is unaware of when. There is a mutual trust between them. An attempt to capture what is behind the mask of mankind. A need to understand the greater picture. The portrayed live and work at Yandara Yoga Institute in Mexico. They work as yoga teachers, reiki masters, astrologers, musicians etc. This project was photographed during the winters of 2017 and 2018 and collectively includes 23 portraits. Together with the portraits there is a number of guided meditations, mantras and music that has been recorded with the participants. Hamlet has arranged to return to Mexico next winter, in order to photograph the characteristic landscape surrounding Yandara. She says it
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to be a magical place, where the dry desert with the gigantic cacti, meets the vast beaches of the Pacific Ocean. It is her plan to make a book out of the combination of the portrait and landscape photographs, together with the sounds of mantras and meditation. Various artworks of the artist were exhibited at the National Museum of Finland, Korjaamo Culture Factory, Kaapeli, Tähtitorninvuoren puisto, and JCDecaux Finland. AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Anna Ellen Hamlet graduated from Gothenburg Photography School in June 2016. Alongside with photography, she works as a part-time nurse. Hamlet’s pictures are an experiment with the photographic image of mankind and what it means to be alive. “With my photographs, I explore our innermost, myself through others and others through myself. The search for what’s behind the mask.” Hamlet
