Abbie Heath | Katriena Emmanuel | 'Power of Faith'

The instant I saw Katriena Emmanuel’s images of Abbie Heath in ‘Power of Faith’, I related to her as an AOC soulmate.  With makeup and hair by Carolina Rojas, Katriena’s sophisticated and powerful images possess an organic, universal, womanly identity. They are photographs with style, sophistication and grace, unless one is just obtuse and so detached from human existence, that their meaning doesn’t penetrate.

Chatting with Katriena Emmanuel, we have more insights into her intentions around ‘Power of Faith’.

For me “the Power of Faith”, was my way of interpreting the theme of “Power” as history tells us of a long connection between power and religion.  I thought what else has proved to be one of the most powerful tools in human culture and existence…. but religion.  Religion has often times been the impetus for wars and countries have been torn as a result of collective faith and then on the flipside, when you examine an individual’s faith, its amazing how powerful it is, in changing an individual’s outlook of everything in life, how they perceive and treat others etc.

But of course wanting to give a unique interpretation (in a photographic and fashion sense), to major world religion or faiths, it all stemed from “the Tree of Life”, taking different organic aspects of a tree, so I made the different headpieces and accessories from organic materials such as the bark, the leaves, the vine with thorns, the seeds or pine cones, and the seed pods and using these organic materials I hoped to capture or create an identifiable look or aspect of that faith.  I thought by using organic materials I would also be able to represent on a deeper level, how all faiths or religions are made from the same principle or source of life (hence tree of life) that despite their differences I can represent the core similarities they have, like the saying “cut from the same cloth”. 

 

The simple truth is, we not that much different than we think we are on the surface. 

 

Thank you so much for seeing the deeper sense of the images represented in “Power of Faith”, I really hoped that it could make a connection to people in some way or the other, open to their interpretation, and how it touches them based on their personal experience and up-bringing.

My current read is ‘The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics’ by the esteemed Princeton professor of religious history at Princeton Elaine Pagels. The goal of AOC — besides the advancement of women’s rights globally — is to create dialogue and understanding about our similarities and not our differences.

I’d like to see us all in enough open space that we can choose our own respective journeys, which often are opposite sides of the same river and flowing in the same direction.

It is more artists like Katriena Emmanuel who represent our only hope of a stable global future in the 21st century, and I am so glad that we are able to ‘meet her’ visually and psychologically through ‘Power of Faith’.  Anne

See website for Katriena Emmanuel

via tp