The Feminine portrayed in the photographs of Berlin based artist Irene Cruz is of clear Hellenic inspiration. Like the Muses, divine daughters of the god Apollo and the Titaness Mnemosyne, have inspired artists, musicians and poets since the dawn of time for compositions coming directly and sincerely from the artist’s pathos – transmuting personal feeling into universal feelings – the muses and the young fauns immortalized by Cruz’s camera whisper a familiar litany in our ears. The photographs immortalize portraits in a landscape that is not only favorable for environmental and philosophical reflections, but also for pure aesthetic contemplation. The light is cold and crepuscular, and contributes to give a sense of timelessness almost sacred to the composition, as if Cruz managed to photograph the essence of an intimate dream, dreamt simultaneously by the collectivity. The hope of a return to a harmonious relationship with the rest of nature is also palpable in the work of this young photographer: the landscape and the human subjects appear in their primitive communion, where co-belonging is obvious and harmony is evident, as it used to be in the mythological Arcadia ruled by the god Pan. In this communion between mankind and nature the bodies – masculine and feminine – are sometimes indistinguishable from one another once again to confirm Steiner’s theory on the cosmic feminine transcending genders. 

Luisa Catucci,

Gallerist