Brutal Beauty

About

Shoky Van der Horst was born and raised in Holland. She studied at the HKU University of the Arts in Utrecht and lives in Paris over the last 25 years. She travelled the world working as a fashion model and editor, growing her passion for photography and developping her voice through her images which made her a successful fashion & beauty photographer working for International magazines and shooting advertising campaigns.

Shoky wants to show us the intrinsic value of those things, most of the time banal, invisible for others, that move her. Resulting of her examinations of the accepted concepts of beauty and its different perceptions, imprinted in the world around us troughout time. Shoky challenges these existing aesthetic norms and captures the raw beauty of those forgotten or ignored objects.

She unveils a new approach to all those rarely considered objects of our daily lives.

"My approach embraces and responds to the japanese philosophy Wabi Sabi, which considers beauty as a dynamic event that occurs between you and something else. Beauty can spontaneously appear at any moment given the proper circumstances, context, or point of vieuw. Beauty is considered as an altered state of consciousness, an extraordinary moment of poetry and grace".

Traces of time and signs of wear and tear do not need to be disguised or dismissed, but contribute to the creation of an unexpected beauty of objects surrounding us. Just like the color and textural metamorphoses of metal when it tarnishes and rusts or the way clay cracks when it dries.

By the photographic act the original meaning of objects and places is transformed opening worlds of other possibilities allowing new meanings and bringing out beauty from the raw form. Creating differant emotions according to the spectators personal experiences and feelings. The imperfection and rough textures often found in my pictures far from our « plastic » world make us re-connect with our instincts and our need to « sense and touch ». It makes us question what beauty is about.
« Once you slow down and look very closely to the things surrounding you, you might hear them whisper...That’s when I take the picture ».