Eva Trust’s background in painting really comes through in her beautiful and artistic photo series Beach Reflections. The Australia-based photographer captures fleeting moments on the beach, when the wet sand acts as a mirror, reflecting more than you might think. The silent sand reveals stories that often go untold. “Bodies undress as they enter the water, visitors arrive seeking ‘time-out’ and children play and explore the water’s edge with an uninhibited freedom increasingly rare in everyones’ lives today,” Trust says. “The scenes are recognizable and warmly familiar, yet the dissolution and semi-abstraction of the figures makes them flicker like mirages; the product of a dream or perhaps some heat-induced fanciful imagining.” Enjoy Trust’s wonderful photos and then read a short interview we conducted with her, below.
Where were most of these beach photos taken? All of the shots were taken at Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia. The sand is very fine there which means the water stays on top longer providing the mirror effect for the reflections. After taking them, what kind of stories did they reveal? The stories are as varied as the people using the beach and yet they are quite similar in the sense that all of us need nature connection, play time, safe space and repose no matter where we come from and what our culture or religion. The beach seems to bring out the kid in all of us. When people look back at them on a gallery wall or online the images seem to instill memories about those carefree moments and experiences. What was your greatest challenge in this series? The greatest challenge for me was to get the shots, it requires patience and being there at the right time with right conditions and enough people to create the reflections for me. I discovered the reflections in the wet sand 6 years ago when looking through my camera scanning the beach. They were more distant and abstract then, using a longer lens. I then started becoming more specific about my subjects as well as getting closer to them. People whose reflections I capture are mostly unaware that I am photographing in their direction or even what I am aiming at. Most are completely oblivious to the existence of these mirror images; only when I point them out do people start seeing them. The reflections only exist for split seconds and are entirely dependent on people’s movement, the sand structure and the tide coming in and out. I am kind of a hunter stalking it’s pray waiting for the right moment for everything to come together in the right way to take the shot. What did you enjoy most about creating this? I get to capture moments that will never be repeated again in the same way. I also enjoy bringing awareness about something that most people don’t see at all. I strangely remember all of the situations and moments I capture just by looking back at the images. And I get to hang out at the beach a lot and zone out from the rest of the world! Thank you for sharing your beautiful photos with us, Eva. They’re amazing. Eva Trust via [Ignant]