Photographers: On Beauty

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

John Keats

Introduction

Is beauty timeless? Or is it a construct of the cultural moment? Is it inherent in the thing that is considered beautiful, or in the subjective eye of the beholder? Indeed is ‘beauty’ simply aesthetically appealing, or does it arise from something more complex, perhaps more challenging?

For Aristotle, beauty was a mathematically definable set of criteria, concrete and external, while Confucius believed all things to be beautiful, its perception dependent on the sensitivity of the individual viewer. Voltaire considered that beauty was not simply seen, it must be felt, it must affect the viewer personally. And, coming at last to a photographer, Diane Arbus asserted that true beauty often lies in the unexpected, the overlooked…

In this final post for 2024, Talking Pictures presents twelve personal reflections on beauty by acclaimed contemporary photographers from around the world. Their insights, and the images they have selected to illustrate their ideas, are as richly diverse as are their individual creative practices.

Wishing all our readers a beautiful 2025, however you define it!

Alasdair Foster

Roger Ballen

South Africa

Beauty and ugliness are often seen as opposites – synonyms for aesthetic goodness and badness. Through my photography, I aim to transcend such labels, showing they are distinct sensory experiences. I think that beauty often aligns with conscious expectations – beautiful objects conform to ideals and schemas through which we perceive the world. Beauty evokes awe, but also mild pleasure and even boredom. My work, in contrast, brings to the surface scenes from deep in the psyche that reveal the unfamiliar and unrecognisable – touched by decay, disintegration, and distortion. In fact, these images challenge ordinary perceptions, evoking horror or attraction, confronting deeper aspects of the self. It is in the challenging of beauty that I access the unconscious, where conventional categories dissolve, and deeper, perhaps mystical, truths emerge beyond words or simple concepts.

More about Roger Ballen here…

Rona Bar and Ofek Avshalom

United Kingdom

We believe that beauty is most evident when it reflects an authentic expression of individuality, personal character, and the richness of a life’s experience.

Emmanuelle is a model with a disability, represented by Zebedee Talent Agency – which champions disabled and visibly different models. We chose to capture her in her own realm, wearing a dress by her favourite designer. Everything about Emmanuelle screams chic edginess and unique beauty. And her apartment in Brighton is an extension of her personality, filled with provocative art, vintage knick-knacks, and vibrant one-of-a-kind artefacts.

For us, this image evokes a nostalgic feeling reminiscent of the golden age of Hollywood glamour. It is in sharp contrast to the way in which style today is losing its authenticity and uniqueness with the relentless rise of mass production.

More about Rona Bar and Ofek Avshalom here…

Ciro Battiloro

Italy

It is not easy to describe beauty in words. For me, beauty is not just an aesthetic concept, it is something that goes beyond that, it is something that can move us emotionally and philosophically. Beauty is a medium that connects us with the sacred and with our most essential being.

The intimacy of people is beautiful. Intimacy is something extraordinary, it reveals the uniqueness of every human life. Intimacy as closeness, proximity, is a form of silent and discreet resistance. It is a shelter from the passing of time, from existential crises, and from all the disruptive factors that contemporary society imposes on us.

More about Ciro Battiloro here…

Judith Nangala Crispin

Australia

© Judith Nangala Crispin ‘In the garden of Namadji, a tree holds nine small birds in its arms, as they grieve for their friend beneath the earth.’ (Lumachrome glass print, chemigram, drawing. Ten stillborn keats, pressed native fuchsia [Eremophilia latrobe], seawater, and Vegemite on fibre paper. Exposed twenty-one hours in a polycarbonate greenhouse.)

Nine birds bury someone they’ve loved, between the roots of the Great Tree. Each bird knows it will also die. But in this moment, their grief is so immense, so unfathomable, it binds them together.

Recently, I lost someone who really mattered to me, to cancer. It felt like I’d been shot with a cannonball, right through my centre. I heard voices. I woke late at night, reaching out for skin and warmth and life. I carried a ghost’s name on my tongue.

Last week I heard Cold Chisel play in Canberra. Thousands of people, mostly over fifty, belted out the lyrics to ‘Khe Sanh’ as if their hearts were exploding – playing air guitar, despite the deaths, divorces, and failures that come with middle age. And I saw it then: how we survive by sharing whatever light we find in the wreckage of our lives.

And if that isn’t beauty, then I don’t know what is.

More about Judith Nangala Crispin here…

Maika Elan

Vietnam

Beauty, to me, is the result of chance – a collision of moments that cannot be fully predicted – an idea exemplified in these three images from ‘Here Comes Thaipusam’. Thaipusam is an enigmatic festival, both mysterious and intense. The first time I saw images of it, I envisaged a pilgrimage from a distant era. As an avid magazine reader, I began to wonder: What if the raw, traditional scenes of Thaipusam were layered with the polished imagery of modern popular culture? It was this question that inspired my experiment.

Before traveling to Batu Caves in Malaysia, where the festival takes place, I exposed rolls of film with images from contemporary magazines. During Thaipusam, I re-exposed those same rolls, unsure of what the final outcome might be. It is often said that we photograph to discover how something looks when photographed. This project became my exploration of that idea: an unpredictable merging of tradition and modernity, revealing beauty in the unexpected.

More about Maika Elan here…

Luis González Palma

Guatemala

Beauty is a topic that has always interested me philosophically.

It is certainly in the eye of the beholder, but for me, essentially, what I am looking for with my images is for them to reflect ‘beauty’ as a form of consolation. Consolation before the inclemency of being alive and living in a world without any meaning. Perhaps what we call beauty helps us face the contingency of life, and that images that have these characteristics can be intimate companions on this journey.

More about Luis González Palma here…

Lin Zhipeng / No.223

China

When we describe someone’s beauty, it shouldn’t just be their face. I’ve long photographed the beauty that comes from life experiences, including the bodies of the friends I love.

This image is from the art project ‘Amour Defendu’ [forbidden love], which I made in Paris in 2023. In it, I photographed nudes in random public places around Paris. I wanted the body to intervene in a public milieu, and these road-side flowers became the means by which to create a serendipitous relationship with the body. For me, that momentary composition of body and flowers captures the concept of beauty.

More about Lin Zhipeng / No.223 here…

Cecilia Paredes

Peru

The beauty of this work resides in its story. I bought the fabric attracted by the rather aggressive way the birds look. Birds in action, their beaks open, flapping nervously, like something was on their mind…

With the fabric already in my studio, I started researching. I learned that, according to Japanese tradition, these birds (herons) drive away plague. And I was discovering all of this during the Covid lockdown, so the whole work – spirit, fabric, and context – aligned to resonate with these overwhelming circumstances; circumstances that were affecting all of us as human beings. It created in me a profound need to make this performance.

More about Cecilia Paredes here…

Mariette Pathy Allen

USA

Delia was in love with her red sequin dress. When we met in 1986, she wore street clothes, but by the time we finished chatting, she had become a glamorous movie star in an evening gown at high noon. For Delia, a transgender woman, the freedom to be herself while wearing this dress out in the open was a blessing.

Three years ago, I visited Delia. We wanted to re-create that splendid day. The red dress sparkled in the sunlight and embraced Delia’s body. To Delia and to me, that shade of red, bolstered by its lively sequins, is beautiful, even magical. In 1986, I thought Delia was beautiful and fearless. When I went to see her in 2021, I was moved. Delia had kept the dress for all these years and was thrilled to be able to wear it again. Even though Delia is no longer the beautiful woman she was, the dress brings back her courage and nostalgia for a good time during her difficult life.

More about Mariette Pathy Allen here…

William Ropp

France

I don’t believe that beauty is in the eye of the beholder… I believe in the absolute, total, and universal objective beauty of the ‘Mona Lisa’, Michelangelo’s ‘Pietà’, or Auguste Rodin’s ‘Danaïde’… There’s no need for a common culture to be ecstatic in front of these works, whether you come from the most primitive tribe or Parisian high society, the same shiver of ecstasy will light up your reptilian brain.

Of course, subjective beauty, that which appears only to oneself, also exists, but this is your personal history and this beauty is looking only at yourself.

More about William Ropp here…

Tomoko Sawada

Japan

I use photography and video to explore the relationship between one’s inner life and outer image. But I know there are no answers to this relationship, just as there are no answers to ‘beauty’, or to ‘love’… My ‘TIARA’ series appears to depict a beauty pageant, yet everyone in the image is actually me. Can you really judge who is worthy of wearing the tiara, even though they are all the same person?

I believe that every person in the world is beautiful in their own way. I am interested in human beings in all their aspects – the bad as well as the good – because it is in that completeness that I find the beauty that I love.

More about Tomoko Sawada here…

Danielle van Zadelhoff

Belgium

A memory from my early childhood: I collected stamps. There was a stamp with butterflies on it; I loved it and thought it was so beautiful. The colours, the shape of the butterflies, the fragility. One day my father looked at my collection, pulled this stamp out of my book and said that it was worthless, the edges were damaged. For the first time I realised that the value of beauty is very personal.

Experiencing beauty gives me a deep feeling of satisfaction, of peace, of happiness – as if I am coming closer to the core of the ultimate, of the pure. But, for me, to experience beauty it is necessary that there is also imperfection… and that the beauty holds within it stories or layers, so that it never becomes flat.

More about Danielle van Zadelhoff here…

‘On Beauty’ is a Talking Pictures original.

~ Talking Pictures ~

Photographers: On Beauty

Introduction