“Mari,
I received my album, and with it, all the emotions I experienced on the day of the photoshoot and the reveal were renewed with new colors and new tones.
My experience began long before I entered your studio. It started with each post on your profile, each reflection on the body, beauty, being a muse, and being real.
Finding you was like finding an echo for the voice inside me. A voice that told me every day that time is the greatest ally of women who do not resist it. That there is beauty in us, and this beauty transforms with us. Your photos, the way you portray us, are a force against all the whispers that try to fit us into a mold and freeze us in time.
I could write a thesis on how your work impacts a woman’s self-esteem. How it impacted mine.
But today, I’ll focus on a small chapter: the wrinkles and spots on my face.
Yes. They exist and are there. The makeup didn’t hide them. The photos revealed them. The expression lines earned over my 45 years, the sun spots from my homeland, and, why not say, from the excesses of youth… they’re all there. The uneven skin, the thighs… the strong arms, the folds that didn’t exist at 15, 20 years old, proof that metabolism is no longer the same and that they also tell the story of two pregnancies… The asymmetries. I see all of this in my photos. You didn’t disguise them. You didn’t erase them. And with the spots, wrinkles, and all the signs of the relentless passage of time, I look stunning.
I also saw in my photos the boldness of someone challenging the common standards of beauty alongside a timidity and insecurity that comes from doing just that.
Did you notice?
I could say much more.
But I will save these feelings for the next photoshoot. Because I have much more to tell and reveal about myself through your lenses. And because emotions like the ones I felt are diminished when reduced to words.
They need to be drawn with light.
The photoshoot I did with you reveals to anyone who has the opportunity to see the photos a beautiful woman, at 45 years old. That I am a beautiful woman at 45 years old.
But for me, it tells a story of the achievement of maturity, of reconciliation with the body, of the discovery of beauty. They are photos, and photos are never just an image.
Thank you.”
