in the Living World

Release the pose. Remember the animal. Tell YOUR truth.

I make photographs that document human nature—unadorned, unperformed, and alive. My work lives where body meets Earth, where light collaborates, and where only the honest image survives.

Zadie Mathis

Soul Portraits in wild places—predominantly women, sometimes couples by request.
Sessions unfold outdoors, often nude if you choose, and always at your pace. We walk, talk, drink tea, wade into water, follow weather, and let the land decide. No staging. Minimal direction. I place the body; the body finds itself.

I shoot with vintage glass, film, and manual processes. Old lenses from other eras, light leaks, grain, and the slow craft that invites a timeless, mythic quality—sunrise earth tones, soft blacks, moss and gold.

Available by inquiry for select music/short-form video pieces in the same spirit: truthful, elemental, and spare.

What I Offer

Why I Do This

I believe in the Beauty Way: that we are animal and spirit, blade of grass and star.

Photographing you inside the larger body of Earth restores belonging—yours, mine, ours. When the camera, the person, and the land click into coherence, the image carries something bigger than any of us. I wait for that alignment. I work for it. I surrender to it.

The Field We Enter

This is not a performance of embodiment.
It is documentation—of you, here, now—in right relationship with place.
Bodies are not problems to solve. They are beings.
Clothes can be costumes; sometimes they are noise. We listen for the signal.

The work meets you where you are: tender, feral, changing.
A portrait can be a mirror or a revelation. Sometimes both.

Connection & Reverence with Earth — reciprocity, respect, reality.

  • Creative Transformation — images as thresholds.

  • Nuance, the in-between, the formless made visible.

  • Love as the quiet engine of the work.

Guided by

How a Session Flows

  1. Consult — a simple conversation to feel into place, boundaries, intentions.

  2. Wander — we let the setting lead; I offer only essential cues.

  3. Make — manual craft, old glass, natural light; fewer frames, more presence.

  4. Deliver — a curated set of images true to the day, the land, and you.

Consent is ongoing. Edits honor natural color and skin; the aim is fidelity, not fiction.

Who This Is For

People who want to make art with the natural world, over content for a feed.
Those willing to set down the mask and be seen as they are—animal, luminous, in process.

Creatives, artists, muses, lovers; those called to the elements.

Where

Based near Asheville, North Carolina. I travel by invitation; location is a collaborator.

Begin

If you feel the yes:
View the portfolio and request a consultation. Share your seasonal window, any boundaries or needs, and where the land is calling you.

Portfolio

the alarm sounds twice today

first, when I open my eyes and realize where I am

second, when I curl my toes, blue lotus drifting

and find the spring trap laid below the surface

I think of the iceberg theory

I learned in a college classroom

two days after losing my mind on LSD

that half of me is buried beneath the water

hidden from executive function and survival needs

yeah - thats who I met last night, I whispered

dark lilith in leo

the shadow seeker

the provoking seductress

the ‘I’m gonna hold this self apparent

mirror up for you, oh it’s so fucking heavy

so you better atleast look and acknowledge your darkness’

is there anyone else out there who plays in the void? 

who shapeshifts in the underworld?

I cry out, wishing people didn’t scutter

when I acknowledge my origin point

that I was born from the rank soil

the underbelly of the beast

brought forth to bring forth

the duality and depth of Self

‘a priestess’, I scoff, ‘don’t call me that’

prophetic dreams and triggering 

the worst of you

to reveal the best of you

it’s not the job I wanted

I dream of the fairies and sprites of the light

I feel far from a world that sparkles

I’m more confident in a world that seeps

oozes out in vapor, swirling to keep the scene stable

feelings that slice and touch the wound

directly, rather than dance on the ground above

without excavation 

I once surrendered to this path

this lifetime or in the past

power hammers above me as I sleep

I used to push it away with dissociative daydreams

but now I see I must crawl through the muck

reclaim the mirror

help others who are stuck