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ashlybauserman.com

Morenike- Gold/ Beige

It's amazing how beautiful lighter eye-shadow is on darker skin.


This was the first time I realized how special her smile was. Notice the drawing on the side of her face is an imitation of the earring.

Morenike - Yellow

A couple months ago, I began a journey and fascination with color. I found a girl I worked with from Nigeria who's face shape was so familiar to what I had grown up with in Africa, but so different than what the western ideal of beauty is that had been ingrained in me. I needed to ask her to allow me to photograph her. We sat down and came up with the concept of "7 Colors" in which I would take 7 different colors and create a different feel for each set. It was my opportunity to memorize her face, her facial expressions, the way her skin color reacted to light, the way make up looked on her. This has been a very personal project as I've done each set, idea, make-up and developed an incredible artistic relationship with the subject.

Reflection
Notice the perfect symmetry in her positioning except for her tilted face. This is what creates a greater depth in the reflection of her from the mirror.

Creature

Beginnings

I have been in a desperate search for the purpose of my existence. I think we all reach that point in our lives when doing the mundane and what is asked of us in order to be successful is no longer enough. We want something deeper, something that confirms that we are alive. I have discovered that my very nature is constantly searching for this "life-line." I have been learning languages since I was born. My mother is El Salvadorian, and my father is a Southern boy from Virginia. I grew up in Guatemala, in Zambia, Ghana, Germany and finally ended up moving back to the U.S. carrying with me the sense that my identity had been shaped into being "a citizen of the world." My passion for languages and learning as many of them as I could was just the door into minds of people I would otherwise never understand. In college I felt a compelling need to begin photographing everything. It got to the point where that is what I did in my free time. Languages were the way I found others, and photography has been the way in which I've found myself. I've discovered both the simplicity and complexity that musters beauty and life. I have been photographing everything from spiders, to inanimate objects, to friends of mine, to creating drawings and photographing them.... anything that makes me feel alive for those instances.