AN OLD FRIEND

JENNY PAPALEXANDRIS

// Jenny is a Visual Artist/Photographer and Educator based in Australia. Trained as a sculptor and painter, she eventually leaned towards photography. She explores photography as a subjective response to the world of light and shadow. Her photographs are highly expressive and visually commanding. Her current series deals more with moods than with an actual representation of the “old friend”, the maritime environment, that she portrays.

Thematically rich and diverse, her photography is imbued with a strong sense of poetry, symbolism and metaphor. They are personal records tracing universal themes of loss, identity and nature as metaphor.

Jenny holds an M.A. and a Bachelor of Education (Art) from the UNSW Art & Design (COFA) in Sydney. “I came to photography after being trained as a sculptor and painter. Taking photographs had always been part of my process and after my studio was out of action I began photography more seriously,” she says.

Her main goals are to create the best work for herself first, it all begins with consolidating and finding your personal voice. “Everything else is a bonus.”

“Photography is an art of observation. It has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”

Elliott Erwitt

What draws you to the arts?

“I feel that the arts bring us closer to our essential nature, it’s a human exchange of how we read and interpret the world around us. It is the filter to reveal something deeper than the exterior appearance of things. The themes we explore are all universal, it is surprising that art connects all beings in this mysterious way.”

What do you like best about the series of images you have shared with us?

“The theme of the sea is something I often return to after working on other projects. It is like taking a walk with an old friend. I don’t think I have captured the essential mystery of our coast and the seas that surround us.”

This photo series explores Jenny´s response to the sea. “I live by the coast and have experienced all her various incantations ranging from calm stillness to brooding tempest.”

Jenny is interested in how landscape can be a metaphor for a wide range of human emotions. “The mood of the sea can change quickly and I normally edit my images to enhance what I felt at that moment rather than just replicating what the lens captured.”

Thus what the viewer finds in Jenny´s landscape images may not only be a focus on delicate details, patterns, and contrasts, but perhaps a small glimpse into her soul, at least at the moment of releasing the camera shutter.

Click on the photos to see a larger image. Some images may be cropped for layout.