Many photos can be taken at a rapid rate. But with that convenience, the trade-off is that it takes more shrewd creativity to imbue a photograph with personality and vitality.
That vitality comes through in the cover art for Mari Kalkun's 2017 album Ilmamõtsan, and also the photography for her Õunaaia album (Apple Orchard Album), where a setting sun twinkles on blossoming apple trees.
These photographs are captured by Ruudu Rahumaru, a photographic artist based in Tartu, Estonia. Her artist name can be interpreted as a reference to the peace or turbulence that inhabit a photograph. Within a rectangular frame, she synthesizes “nature, dance, shamanistic practices, psychology, archetypes...,” to name a few elements.
As an artist, Ruudu works primarily within portrait photography. In the countryside of Estonia, she walks barefoot down trails and through murmuring creeks, camera in hand. She moves through the woods to find a place that aligns with her subjects' personalities, sometimes emphasized with fog, fire, and smoke. Subjects crouch, jump, embrace, and stretch out among the wilderness locations that Estonia has to offer.
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