'Double Emotions': New Work by Annelie Bruijn
I'm on a journey, a search to know more about my own femininity. I always loved being a boyish girl from a young age, even when I had a strong soft female side to me, but over the last 10 years I've been more interested in what femininity means to me and it's place in the world.
In doing this intuitive double exposure project, I find I discover more about myself as a woman. The unknown, the layering, softness, mystery, fluidity, sexuality, letting go, nature.
I'm interested in women who can expose themselves nakedly, but without feeling threatened. Strong, open, sensual but not objectified. Confident and comfortable with their own body and free to be who they really are.
I think in this sense there's still a lot to be discovered about women. The beauty of their form, but also who they are and how they sit in the world, in a literal or dreamy sense.
I love the layering in my pictures, the interaction between human and natural forms, the intentional and the subconscious, the things that you can't define but you can feel them.
As the double exposures are done in the camera, I have no ultimate control over the composition, and I find it liberating that beautiful things can be also be born out of this intuitive process.
Even when I have very specific ideas about how I'd like my pictures to turn out, I need to let go and trust the process.
Dreams and meditation are both very important to me. When you really let yourself go you open up this flood of information and images. I like to feel that this comes through in my work. By using double exposures I open up a space where intuition and coincidences can determine the the image.
I dream sometimes about how it must feel to dissolve in nature, I'm definitely longing for human beings to be closer to nature again, be an integral part of it. Working together to be part of a perfect ecosystem.
