BARESOUL

BARESOUL is an ongoing photographic project created across remote landscapes of Australia and Indonesia. Grounded in psychological science, it follows women in unscripted encounters with nature as they explore their relationship with their bodies.

BARESOUL is an ongoing photographic project where fine art photography meets psychology. Created across wild and remote landscapes of Australia and Indonesia, the series invites viewers to consider photography as an experience of presence and transformation, where the boundary between the human body and the natural world gradually disappears. There are no scripts: each woman’s story unfolds as she explores the relationship with her own body and self in visceral interaction with the natural elements, as I document her experience. The camera is a witness which holds real moments of vulnerability, surrender and coming back to oneself. The landscape is an active participant. Like the body, it is marked by history and scars, and is capable of renewal.

Born in Ireland and raised in Russia, I now live and work between Australia and Europe. For more than fifteen years, photography has been my way of investigating human experience and inner transformation. I began my career in journalism and fashion, graduating from Central Saint Martins in London and collaborating with Vogue Italia and Condé Nast.

BARESOUL began with my own unravelling after I relocated to Australia in 2019. Living far from home, in isolation, I faced personal loss, chronic pain, failed attempts at healing, and a growing disconnect from myself. What slowly helped was Australia’s untamed nature. I hugged trees, talked to them, kept appointments with the ocean, and consistently wondered if I was losing my mind. At the same time I began studying psychology alongside my photographic practice. It gave words to what my body already knew: healing needs dialogue, not control; listening, not forcing. Photography became less a way of producing images and more a form of presence, connection and healing.

In time I met women who wanted to explore themselves in the same way. BARESOUL became a space of unconditional acceptance where each woman can meet her body on her own terms. The sessions follow a methodology in the making, a practice rooted in psychological research and refined with each encounter. Undressing here is as much psychic as physical. It is a way to admit pain, let go of old stories, and be seen without performing.

The project proposes a relationship with nature built on dialogue and shared existence. It asks what it means to inhabit a body, to listen to its rhythms, to find belonging within the natural cycles of growth and loss. Here, nature is a mirror of the psyche, a teacher of resilience, and a reminder that the path to reconnection begins through acceptance of the body itself.

BARESOUL was first exhibited in London in 2025.