Project Items – Henryk Hetflaisz Photography

Shifting Shadows

engineroom — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 12:51:22 +0000

This series aims to represent the darkness of our subconscious that morphs our perception and drives actions. Unrelenting, elusive shadows, sensed yet unseen due to their precedence over our self-awareness.

Is it possible to illuminate and harness their power?

Passion and Reason

engineroom — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 12:48:41 +0000

This is about the dance within me between cool white reason and uncontrollable, red-hot passion, desire, fear and anger. At times the dance seems harmonious, rhythmic, controlled, intentional and balanced. But all too often purity of reason is swarmed, overpowered by the multitude of raging passions. Let these run havoc and burn out, withdrawing judgement? Steel wilful reason to quell the upheaval outright? Is there a choice to make at all?

Nature Exposed

engineroom — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 12:42:11 +0000

On a sub atomic level, everything in the universe is a scintillation of varied frequencies of energy.

So, although we perceive ourselves as separate material entities from the natural world, I wanted to experiment with visual representation of the idea that we are all part of the vibrational energy of nature. Here I used solarisation to reveal the interwoven tapestry of life.

Folds

engineroom — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 12:32:18 +0000

Here I wanted to create a series of image that belies our idea of what the human body looks like. When we hear “human body”, we visualize a head and 4 limbs attached to a torso. But I find the human form endlessly surprising. The moment we shift our perspective, come closer, the body becomes transfigured. The familiar disappears and new, unknown, undiscovered forms emerge like travelling dunes ever-shaped by wind. One can get lost in the crevasses, canyons, valleys and ridges, wandering in wonder, relishing the continuously unfolding vistas.

The Eighth Veil

engineroom — Mon, 23 May 2011 10:11:52 +0000

Here I am seeking to strip our naked self one level further, beyond nakedness, beyond perceived reality into the realm of the spirit to the protean energy of light that bonds us.

These images are inspired by the Dance of the Seven Veils, thought to have originated with the myth of the fertility goddess Ishtar of Assyrian and Babylonian religion. In this myth, Ishtar decides to visit her sister, Ereshkigai, in the underworld. When Ishtar approaches the gates of the underworld, the gatekeeper lets Ishtar pass through the seven gates, opening one gate at a time. At each gate, Ishtar has to shed an article of clothing. When she finally passes the seventh gate, she is naked.

By giving this exhibition the title “the Eighth Veil“ I was alluding to both the sensuous dance of Ishtar (and later in history, of Salome) and to the beauty of the human form, once stripped of all clothing and human attachments.

In this series, taken at night in my garden, dancer Sarah Cattrall becomes the lightening rod that transmits the protean strokes. She is a celestial body, a force of nature. Here the traces of comet, there a ribbon of the cosmos.

Moving Light

Henryk Hetflaisz — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 19:03:37 +0000

What happens when the moving body of a dancer becomes the paintbrush and photographic film is the canvas?