For months now, I've been looking for this one photograph of my three years old self sitting at the bottom of my grandparent's leopard-clad staircase in Brooklyn. I remember this photograph so well, I can sense it: I had my hair in long braids, and I wore a knit black shirt with red bows, and a knit red skirt. The white walls had a '70s-like plaster design (even though my grandparents only moved to that house in the mid-eighties), and they were at the right of the raised den where the piano was, and at the left of the peach kitchen.
{this design, by Miles Redd, always reminds me of my maternal grandma and her decor}
It's funny how memory works, isn't it? We can smell our mother's perfume from 30 years ago, taste that food we had every Sunday morning and almost feel like we step inside our (or our beloved's) past homes. Still, there is nothing like the real thing. I only recently came to the conclusion that my grandmother must have been interested in decorating. For the past 25 years I always loved how their house was decorated but kind of assumed it was... just there. It never occurred to me that the leopard carpet, peach kitchen, cane back chairs and gorgeous bedrooms were put together by someone. And now that the house is sold I regret that no one thought of taking pictures of it while it lasted. In a corny sort of way, I feel it would have helped, somehow.
{this room by Stephen Sills reminds me of my paternal grandparents' house}
When Aline Frisch told me more about what she calls Soul Photography, I got it immediately. I've done some translation work for Aline, and she graciously took my profile photos in her beautiful apartment in Tel Aviv. Aline, originally from Belgium, used to be a high-end fashion and beauty photographer, until she decided she wanted to dive deeper than the surface.
{capturing the essence of home by Soul Photography}
Soul Photography is all about helping people to connect to themselves through intimate photography sessions, exposing who they really are instead of putting up a facade as so many photographers help people do. Another service Aline offers, which spoke straight to my heart, is coming to clients' homes and just documenting their everyday life with her camera. No awkward posing or tiresome takes, just... being yourself. "one thing that I'm missing," says Aline, "is pictures from my home as a child, from our simple everyday routines." Reading this post, I assume you can guess how I could relate to that.
{soul photography}
Images: Miles Redd, Stephen Sills via Splendid Sass, Aline Frisch for Soul Photography
has certainly made me appreciate them more. 
