SONIA MELNIKOVA ART PHOTOGRAPHY

The WABI SABI series reflects my strong affinity with the Japanese philosophy and aesthetics of wabi-sabi, which represents a world view centered on the acceptance of impermanence and reveres the beauty in the old and imperfect. In the words of architect Tadao Ando, “... wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death. It reminds us that we are all but transient beings on this planet — that our bodies as well as the material world around us are in the process of returning to the dust from which we came.... Through wabi-sabi, we learn to embrace liver spots, rust, and frayed edges, and the march of time they represent.” And this is how wabi-sabi is summarized by Andrew Juniper: “Wabi-sabi is an intuitive appreciation of a transient beauty in the physical world that reflects the irreversible flow of life in the spiritual world. It is an understated beauty that exists in the modest, rustic, imperfect, or even decayed, an aesthetic sensibility that finds a melancholic beauty in the impermanence of all things.”

Related series: FALL COLORS, STILL LIFES ON SAND, ZENSCAPES