TITLE: I grieve the beauty

Dead winter leaves seen behind a window stained with droplets (27 January 2025).

Taken at time of painful loss and grief, this sight of the ‘tears’ and the leaves, still beautiful in death, affected me very deeply.

AUTHOR: Sarah Garland (United Kingdom)

Sarah Garland is a published photographic artist based in the Midlands, England, UK. The drive behind her practice is the search for beauty and ‘essence’ in the hidden jewels of the natural and urban world around her. Her hope is to create images that inspire people to think and feel deeply, and that connect them to what is beyond themselves. Find her gallery on Instagram @sarahheartsoul.

My photograph practice is a deeply personal expression of my inner world and nature. It is an experience of exploring outwardly, whilst going deep within to find myself – a kind of intimate and receptive witnessing of both inner and outer worlds where, simultaneously, I see and am seen. I do it, not with my mind, but with an eye that is inextricably connected to my heart and my soul.

As I go about the world seeking beauty in it, seeing where no one saw, treasuring what is not valued or what has been overlooked, nurturing what I have found and sharing its beauty with others, I am showing it love. In seeing and loving, I am also seen and loved. Fundamentally, my photography is an act of love.

It has also always felt like a kind of spiritual practice - not least of all because it is about light and photography is, fundamentally, about light. It is the search for ‘essence’ in the world around me - hidden and in plain sight - that which lies beyond the surface, the Light beyond the light.

Going deeper into the world of form - beautiful and unbeautiful – I find aspects of the divine and myself and, through the crucible of the camera, both are transcended and transformed. In this sense, my work is both personal and transpersonal.

My subjects are of whatever speak to me, spiritually or personally. However, when I take a photo, I am creating something, not recording it. I am both receptive and active in that creation, which is an alchemical marriage of inner and outer, intrinsic and transcendent. In this way, my images mirror myself and also what is beyond myself. This is what is exciting and meaningful to me.