Nadine Daley

I’ve always been drawn to photographing the figure. The beauty of the curves and the softness one can express is something I love to accentuate by surrounding my models in natural environments. Combining the two has allowed me to develop my body of work over the past year and has led me to feel very inspired by the work of Pre-Raphaelite painters. 

Never having my models make eye contact with the camera is purposeful. I feel it is important because it creates a sense of ambiguity and allows viewers to connect with the images on a more personal level, almost allowing them to replace the figures with themselves in their mind. Pre-Raphaelites believed in sympathizing with what is serious, direct, and heartfelt without being self-parading and conventional, which is something I deeply relate to. 

In reference to my paintings, the whimsy and poetic nature of them is what my body of work is modeled after. I want to be able to portray my models with the same amount of romantic influence the women in these paintings had by their painters. I’ve also tried to keep these portraits as historically accurate as possible. All of the flowers in my photographs are flowers they used at the time to depict deeper meanings in their art such as youth, love, faithfulness, fortune, purity, hope, and even death. This combination of nature and romance is something the Pre-Raphaelites loved, and the elegance of the themes is something I will also continue to love forever.