Last week I had the incredible honour of making some really beautiful and inspiring images of Hannah-Luna Rose. It was a session for Roots & Wings (a  new magazine all about empowering women) which she is a co founder of along with her friend and business partner Laura Lewis. I will share more about their project next week but I felt like sharing these first as I felt that these images deserved their own post. 

Sometimes magic happens when you least expect it. We did not plan these images, they just happened in the most beautifully organic way as we spoke about our love for nature, the human body and all the magic we possess. She mentioned how she would love to have images of herself blending in with nature and we chatted a bit about having a future session to do so but as we passed by a beautiful fallen tree that was covered in the softest of moss creating the perfect place to lay on she became inspired and brave so we decided to create some images right then and there. It was perfect. 

There is something so incredibly inspiring about witnessing a woman feeling so confident and free in her own skin expressing herself in the most honest and authentic way and it is an honour that I don't take lightly. 

After our time together I asked her if she would write something to go along with the images and her words took my breath away,

 "There may come a day when my children ask me why I like to be photographed naked, and I will share with them my story. My story is utterly unique, yet interwoven into the tapestry of all women’s stories past present and future. You see, it isn’t a story about being naked: it is a story about a woman’s birthright to be sovereign unto herself, to love and adore her body in sweet ecstatic wonder. Yet it is a sad story too, a story of forgetting and loss: the stolen autonomy of our bodies and the arduous journey to finding ownership once more.

If we look back in history women have danced naked in the forests, under full moons and round fires since time began- it’s in our blood and bones and collective memory. We have celebrated ourselves and each other covered only by the forest trees, we have made love, naked, in divine union upon the earth. We’ve birthed our children with our bare feet rooted into the dirt, we have bled on the earth, bathed and healed ourselves naked in the waters of the earth. Yet the dark side of humanity has seen us shamed, ridiculed, and burned alive for having the audacity to love our bodies and bare the ownership of freedom.

Learning to love my body has been a journey unto itself. I experienced the insidious conditioning many women experience in our culture: careless and loveless sex, too much alcohol and high stress levels: the imperfect perfection of my nakedness heals this conditioning for myself and my children. I will strive to help create a world where our bodies are once again revered and our sexuality once again sacred, showing my children that loving my body is my birthright: their birthright."

Hannah is based in Bournemouth and works with women to help them cultivate an inner toolkit of womb centered practices such as cyclical living, womb consciousness & alchemical dance. She is extremely passionate in helping women live a joyful and ecstatic life and has recently begun through the Roots + Wings community group to offer amongst many other things weekly meditations & self-care rituals. If this interests you I encourage you to join,  I promise you will be inspired. You can also find her on instagram here and also please check out Roots + Wings