Later on that year (2010) I got braver, and found out that self-portraits can be a great way to express things I felt, but had no words for. Wavelengths of elevated emotion, mixed melancholic moods, bittersweet solitary soliloquies, tender tranquil trances, perfect poised pockets of presence and pleasure. (I literally had to study dictionaries, but I have never taken a photography class – it’s all self-taught/intuitive).
A year later I started my own photography business doing photo shoots (family, seniors, babies, couples, etc) and selling nature art prints. It happened naturally, and I truly enjoyed it. I was still taking self-portraits, just for myself – they came without thinking, I could not explain them and I did not feel the need to. Other women began asking me to take pictures of them, and I created my own take on boudoir photography, focused on celebration of self and sensuality – a way to enhance self-love and self-confidence. Around that time I took my first nude self-portrait, so I could know what it felt like for my clients, and began realizing what a complex relationship women have with their bodies. The sexualized projections, societal expectations of beauty, weight fluctuations, and self-judgement tended to melt away in my studio, and it felt very rewarding to create a safe, intimate space for the natural woman to come out and simply enjoy herself in her body as it was at that moment in time.
Then life happened, I had a big spiritual awakening, went to Hawai’i and did Workaway and house-sitting for nine months. When I came back, there was a new energy moving through me that wanted expression. This is how my self-portrait project “Sacred Union” was born – 101 nude self-portraits with 101 unique plants, natural light, and a white wall for background. Simple, natural and true. It all began with a bundle of dried purple flowers and the following questions:
People are mirrors, but based on the emotional state they are in – fear, shame, pride, lack, limitation, jealousy, grief, courage, love, peace, abundance, desire, lust, etc – the reflection they project is oftentimes more about them than us. Nature, on the other hand, does not place judgements or expectations. Re-connecting with it through my body and senses felt like returning home to my authentic self, beyond external labels and before conditioning. Nude did not mean sexual, nude meant peeling all layers that were never truly me. I went out in search of random plants, brought them home with me, and photographed myself with them – spending time with myself, by myself in meditation, exploration and play. Nude meant spontaneous innocence before the ways and belief systems of the world were imposed on me. Some plants made me itch, others felt soft against my skin, they all had an essence I took the time to feel and co-create with. 101 of them total, all different and unique.
Shooting “Sacred Union” took close to a year – it was about presence, slowing down, unravelling. I began the project while I was visiting my family in Bulgaria, and then continued it when I came back to the USA. Summer turned to fall, fall turned to winter, winter turned to spring, and just like in nature everything is constantly renewing, so was I, using fresh plants, dying plants, dead plants, and blossoming plants. Cyclical, unhurried, intimate, internal processes were happening within and without – the mirror in the camera reflecting both objectively, giving nature and me the space to unfold and co-create freely. I did not pose or perform for anyone, I was simply being present in the moment – playing, experimenting, enjoying, flowing. Going out and finding the plants was just as exciting as seeing what I could do with them – weeds for some, fascinating treasures for me and my cats. I could not explain to people what exactly I was doing, because I did not quite know, and that was the best part of it all.
The face may have learned to wear many masks, but the body does not lie. When shooting my self-portrait project “Sacred Union”, I purposefully chose not to show my face to make it more universal. People get attached to faces and personalities, and my intention was to strip it all and uncover my true essence, the soul self. I did not think, I felt. I did not perform, I stayed present. I did not judge, I accepted. I was not being productive, I played. The white wall, tabula rasa, witnessing my undoing and simply being. Natural, wild, free. My curious cats, sneaking in to chew on every plant I brought, creating a mess together, then cleaning it up, and starting all over again. Because, why not? My body the vessel for my soul’s expression.
When you spend time with yourself by yourself engaged in the flow of a creative activity, you begin to see beyond the visible, deeper into the unknown. At least, that’s what happened to me when I was taking these nude self-portraits with plants. Peeling away layers of conditioning and projections, I began to see my body for the miraculous vessel that it is, and respect and appreciate it as it is – imperfections, changes, fluctuations and all. Depending on the season and time of day, the natural light I worked with was always changing as well, coloring my natural never-dyed hair in different hues (initially it was quite blond, the result of spending 9 months in Hawaii, and then it grew out darker, since it was not getting as much Sun). Every new plant evoked new shapes and angles, and it seemed that although on the surface I had simple constants – natural light, body, tripod, camera, remote, white wall, plants – on a deeper level these elements were engaged in a sacred dance of infinite possibilities coming into union in myriads of mysterious ways. What if becoming implied unbecoming and the two were actually one? A process of letting go of all that was not me and uncovering more of who I truly am.
What if we are nature and we are art? What if we don’t need an art appreciation class, but simply presence to see and recognize the gift of life we’ve been given and the beautiful planet that nurtures and sustains us? Your body was formed by a sperm and an egg coming together – how miraculous is that? Photographing my nude body with random plants made me consider all this and marvel at its profound simplicity and complexity. A living being capable of creating more life, giving birth to art, moving, breathing, thinking, feeling, experiencing, expanding in awareness of self and other, realizing all is one vast awakened whole. You, me, the tree…
Each image came with its own short poem – a clue from my soul of what I needed to know. Together they brought me closer to a deeper intimacy with myself and all, a remembering and a return to wholeness.
As Anaïs Nin insightfully put it, “The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.”
After “Sacred Union”, I shot another series of self-portraits with plants, this time in Hawai’i – the idea was to photograph on location, without picking the plants. I called it “Return to Innocence” – a return to nature and my own nature. Every image came with its own poem again. Then I kept going – this time, a merging with the plants in black and white. I called that series of self-portraits “One”.
I did not know what to do with all these self-portrait and then one day in 2019 the name Ava Sol (an acronym of my birth name Slava) came to me, a poem and the idea for this website. So I created it and have been using it ever since to share the art that flows through me. I use natural light for all my self-portraits and usually a simple white wall background or nature.
This is just the short and skinny version to my artistic journey, naturally there’s so much more to it – I wrote two books (“Holy Fire” & “The Sovereign Man”) last year sharing some of the insights I arrived at through creating and sharing my self-portraits. It’s been a fascinating adventure, a soul roadmap, an unfolding, a return, a becoming, an undoing, a remembering, a departure, an arrival, lots of deaths, lots of rebirths, a transformative transfiguration, an attunement, a symphony of sensuality, a wild wise wonder.
