Beautifully Broken

The arts-based project I created is a series entitled “Beautifully Broken” – A Fusion of Lights and Shadows, of Beautiful and Broken. The Fine Art series portrays the beautiful and broken aspects of humans through fine art portraits. Our brokenness is not meant to make us less beautiful, but instead, it brings about our unique beauty. According to Shaden (2013), fine art photographs sound intimidating because it can imply that visual artists have very different abilities than other artists. Fine art photography is essentially the same as personal photography. That is, it creates personal art created by the medium of photography. It is the exact opposite of commercial photography. In other words, it’s about taking pictures for yourself, not for your clients.

Brokenness can mean a lot. It can mean disorder and imperfections. It can mean a broken heart. It can mean physical weakness. For some, it’s a way to seek sympathy. For others, the motivation is to keep themselves true in this flawed humanity and not try to put everything together in a nice and clean package. For others, it’s a cool word, a trend. There’s a lot we can talk about what it means to be broken. But in this series, I wanted my photos to convey that any flaw we have does not make us less beautiful. All of us are beautiful in our own way. It is human nature to be broken inside. It is normal to feel bad sometimes because life is not perfect, we are not perfect and never will be.