ELISA MAENHOUT

"Elisa Maenhout’s photography documents the magic, diversity, comradery, and breathlessness of those who live their lives in water’s embrace. Just as merfolk float between two worlds, defying categorisation with their impossibly hybrid bodies, Maenhout’s images capture the confluence of boundaries that frame the twenty-first century mer-community. Playing with perspective, her work illuminates the amphibious edges where human meets fish, water meets land, and fiction becomes reality. Her images submerge us in a world free from the constraints of gravity and predictability. Here fish soar and swoop through liquid as birds fly through air, light fractures and darkens the deeper eyes move, transforming colours and visual dynamics." ... "Maenhout unsettles our notions of truth and difference by offering a glimpse of the modern mer’s experience and home. In tandem with quotations from the mers she photographs, her images ultimately speak to the enduring appeal of merfolk and their age-old connection with our desire to make sense of the human condition and the world around us."  - Sarah L. Peverley