Donna Oglesby Photography

Project Statement

In the spring of 2023,  I had an aesthetic immersion that took me beyond myself, beyond what I thought I knew: a life-changing experience. Working with three models in Mexico, I found myself making visual commentary about intangible ideas that I had always known and yet never fully acknowledged. I was awash in the feminine.

I felt there were messages about femininity that needed to be heard and translated into visual images at this particularly fraught moment for humankind.

There are deeper meanings beneath the surface beauty of the perennial female form in my work. Society needs the breath of the feminine spirit to bring life and joy, the capacity to feel, to create art, to connect deeply, and to trust. In the Jungian sense, the feminine spirit – Lo Sagrado Femenino -- belongs to both men and women. We cannot be whole without acknowledging these virtues and making room for them in ourselves and in our society.

Through my work, I want to give viewers the courage to restore their relationship to the female soul. It is a new venture for me. In the words of T.S. Eliot, I’m in the fight to recover what has been lost and found, and lost again and again.