Photo Set: Lost Fairytales

Lost Fairytales

By Shamira Crivellaro
QuailBellMagazine.com

Athena 
Model: Jasmine
Makeup: Sofia Hume

Our civilization is made by stories, tales which at first visual in the darkness of caves/refuges became words along the Mesopotamian rivers, on the shores of the Mediterranean, on board of the drakkars in the Northern Sea. Everywhere in the world as we know it any civilization is born and defines itself through its own stories, coming from the very beginning of human memory to be founding and identitary myth. "Myth" for the Ancient Greeks meant "tale," not as an empty entertaining fantasy fiction, but as a story that enquired and defined the dark, the hidden, the primordial in the human nature. The Olympic deities walked among the humans, they fed on their dreams and nightmares through their own stories. As long as mankind has told their myths, the ancient gods and goddesses could live. Unreachable and faraway but imagined, therefore alive. When myths were lost in the shadow of a vague blindness, empty stories of a deluded illusion, the ancient gods disappeared in silence..."Lost Fairytales" is an attempt to unbury from oblivion the memory of that inspiration which has animated the human spirit for centuries

The series presents mythical figures in a contemporary context, as if Athena and Medusa woke up from a ultramillenarian sleep and wished to reveal themselves to eyes unused to dreams. It has a dark twist because the myths are caught in the moment of waying out from the darkness. They are proud and hungry ghosts, struggling against their own loss in the shadow of contemporary mists. 

Since Ancient Greece throught the Elizabethan England until the Enlightenment women couldn't (at least officially) be active in public. At the theatre, female roles were performed to men. Prejudgments of libertine promiscuity have always surrounded women dancers of any age until not much time ago. The female body portrayed in paintings and sculptures was often of courtesans and prostitutes (when not openly refused and adapted from male models), as if it was something shameful that "good people" weren't supposed to show. "Lost Fairytales" features only female models, as a recognition of the independence and dignity of their body and as a heartfelt hommage to the unbreakable bond between female blood and mystical power. For millennia human civilizations were matriarchal, devouted to lunar cults of the night, while sun and daylight cults are universally recognized as men-driven. An echo of a buried knowledge persisted in figures like Hecate or Medusa, it's one of the reasons for witches have been emarginated and prosecuted. It is in honour of this ancestral awareness that "Lost Fairytales" proudly presents its women deities, painted with light from the dark.

Artemis
Model: Amanda Bray
Makeup: Nazilla Davidson

Hera 
Modeling & Makeup: Kaykay 

Eris 
Modeling & Makeup: Chantelle 

Apollo 
Modeling & Makeup: Gabrielle Nolan

Hermes
Makeup: Nadia Hussain

Medusa
Model: Rina Lyles
Makeup: Sofie Hume

Shamira Crivellaro is a conceptual portrait photographer based in London and a Communications Design & Photography graduate from Lasalle-SIA International university based in Melbourne. She has worked in Singapore, Italy, France and the United Kingdom. She is intrigued by anything secret, forgotten and magical and strongly believes that photography is in the eye of the photographer. Shamira currently owns Miramarc.Collections—a line of jewelry specializing in whimsical designs. 

#Photography #LostFairytales #Myth #Goddesses #Dieties #Feminism

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