«Lightning judgment and response are the minimum requirements in whales photography»
Mother Nature gave and still gives Natalie Karpushenko the inspiration to travel and discover a world she has come to love since she decided to fly from Kazakhstan to the United States.
She was 18 and this was the first leg of a long journey around the world that brought her and her inseparable camera to the marine wilderness of Tonga and Mauritius.
I don’t want to show people destruction and death. I want people to feel grateful to the oceans, and I want to help them care for and protect them. If we look at things as they are, we can begin to protect and restore the beauty of our world. We don’t have to stress, distort or change the world to fit our habits». These are the words from Natalie Karpushenko, 31-year old Kazakh photographer who began traveling at a very young age. She was 18 years old when she first flew to the United States following an irrepressible desire to discover the world and its nature.
Subjects and themes that Natalie has looked for, found and photographed together with a camera and a muse who, in more than 10 years of stalking and shooting almost everywhere from South Africa to Mauritius, Indonesia to Tonga, has inspired and guided her: Mother Nature, especially in her liquid guise of water, sea and ocean.
But Mother Nature also encompasses the human figure, a subject and object that in her photos takes on the naked elegance of a, needless to say, sensitive nature. A fascination that unites all the elements and can be recognized in all the images caught by the lens of her camera. Whales and sperm whales, shells or endless expanses of sand, are all elements that plastically enhance the beauty of these enchanting bodies. «In my art I show that we can find beauty in everything», Karpushenko adds. And in her photographs, man and nature come together and create a harmony that gives beauty to the forms. A beauty she is ambassador of and that Natalie wants to see with her own eyes and fix, as if by magic, with the click of her inseparable SLR camera.
Natalie Karpushenko says there are many common things between animals and us. Animals, alike humans, are always born naked without wearing anything. «It shows how every lifeform on earth is beautiful as it is, in the primal, natural state without adding anything. We all enjoy being connected, animals and humans are alike. Men with animals, animals in nature, or men in nature, whatever the combination. I try my works to show where we come from and the various things we are connected to», the Kazakh photographer explains.
