Mucha's Muses

Beauty lies in simplicity

Photo series

MUCHA’S MUSES

was created at the beginning of the pandemic, when we could only move within the borders of our district, and after the measures were gradually relaxed, I organized photo shoots with my friends in nearby nature. I spent day after day alone with each of them, and we had conversations about life, philosophy, art, and love by the spring blossoming cherry and lilac trees.

It started as just a desire for freedom,

to be with friends in nature.

LIA PAUGSCH

At the beginning of the pandemic, my whole world turned upside down. I had to cancel and postpone planned photo shoots at home and abroad indefinitely. Despite the fact that I like spending time alone, I missed my family and friends and at the same time I realized how much I longed for a museum, gallery or theater.

I could only find culture and art in books, so I started reading poetry and browsing through the works of my favorite artists in my library. While walking my dog, I found places that were completely ordinary and at the same time incredibly magical, and I got a great desire to photograph someone in those places. I reached out to my friends, took pictures of them in the embrace of blooming trees and tried to depict the fragile connection of nature with pure feminine beauty as gratitude for all the gifts of the earth.

I imagined the muses of the painter Alfonso Mucha and the Pre-Raphaelite artists. Beautiful, ethereal beings who have inspired poets for centuries, yet they are women all around us.

She cannot have the qualities of a dream and be real,

because it could easily happen

that just as you dreamed her

she will disappear one morning with the fog.

LIA PAUGSCH

Mucha's Muses in Black and White won an Honorable Mention in the Monovision Photography Awards 2021, where the jury selected the winning photos from 3,550 entries from around the world.

My favorite photo from the series is the portrait of Katka Benková, which I was the only one to take with an old manual Helios lens. I borrowed it from my mother, many of my childhood portraits were taken with it using the Zenit SLR camera that my mother used to take photos with. I named this portrait "The Muse of the Pre-Raphaelites" and it won an Honorable Mention in the Fine Art Photography Awards 2022, where the jury selected the winning photos from 5,277 entries from around the world, and also in the Budapest Photo Awards 2022.

Models in the series

  • Katarína Benková

  • Lucia Poláková

  • Júlia Knižková

  • Miriam Reznická

  • Terézia Zoričáková