As a photographer and filmmaker, Alizé Jireh seeks to uncover and touch the raw seam between emotion, landscape and the human body. Her work explores the psyche and skin as elemental terrain… her images carry the tone of a remembered dream: sensual, searching, unafraid to hover in the in-between. Alizé’s last offering, Women and the Wind, is her first full-length documentary. Following three women on a sea-bound voyage across the North Atlantic aboard a 50-year-old wooden catamaran, the film traces the currents of reconnection between self, nature and spirit. Currently preparing to cross the next threshold through an intimate cinematic project, The Light Alone, Alizé is taken to Fruholmen, Norway, the northernmost lighthouse in the world, where she and fellow artist Veronica Skotnes will live for one full year – a ritual of reorientation, a reclamation of silence, an experiment in ancient rhythm amidst contemporary dissonance. Through this isolated yet deeply relational act of living, the project becomes a vessel: to soften the separation between inner and outer worlds, to reawaken reverence and to remember how to belong. – I’ve gotten the chance to catch Alizé before her departure north and ask her to reflect on entering this moment.
+ There are seasons when something in us begins to move before we understand where it’s going. A pull, a shedding, a quiet storm beneath the surface. What current is moving through your life right now and how are you letting (or resisting) it reshape you?
Alizé + There is a soft unraveling occurring in my life right now – one that calls me to a deeper silence and a stronger kinship with nature and its cycles. It brings with it a desire to reshape my relationship with time in this one finite life and to co-create an intentional tapestry of story and visual poetry that invites others to experience this expansion as well. I seek simplicity. I’m noticing what I can let go of – habits, roles, even parts of my identity that feel outdated. I don’t know what new form this will take, but I surrender to it by softening myself and saying yes to experiences that allow the noise – so prevalent in this digital age – to dissipate. This is why I felt called to filming The Light Alone documentary.
+ Some truths arrive slowly… They bud, wait, then, all at once, they demand to be spoken, even if they’re not yet tame. What feels ripe in your inner world right now and how are you tending or avoiding it?
Alizé + Attunement to observation and true presence are what feel ripe in me now. I feel I have avoided these aspects of myself because they reveal hidden patterns and inner beliefs that are rooted deep and have been asking to be tugged out of my soil. Facing up to our shadow, our subconscious is not a comfortable unfolding, it is a tearing apart of the chrysalis that holds us together in “safety”. I will tend to nourish these qualities in myself through disconnecting from the digital world while living at the Lighthouse, creating a space that is not filled with the overconsumption of information… I believe that at the rate that we are taking in information today, is a challenging place to be. It keeps us from truly hearing when we are in need of creating silence in our lives, to actually dive in and serve where we are, in the now, to support the quality of experiencing true presence. So through this project, I’m connecting to the essential, that which brings transformation and receptiveness to my spirit. Time is no longer a thing that feels limiting, but expansive and whole.
+ We are always in a relationship with what turns us on. Not just sexually, but soulfully, creatively, energetically. Sometimes it’s quiet, other times it’s dangerous. What’s quietly turning you on right now and how are you letting that energy move (or hide) in your life?
Alizé + Ritual, slowness and intention are values I try to center in my life, and I hope to deepen them while living at the Lighthouse, stepping into the daily practices once carried out by those who tended this place and kept its light alive. This energy moves through me in moments of play, in visual art, music and manual crafts like weaving, cooking, whittling: practices that let me use my body and hands. I want to be in direct contact with the world that holds me, to move with it in grace and curiosity, to caress its fabric with tenderness and learn to listen to its song, hum along and add to its beauty.
Support The Light Alone project here
Editor’s Note –
INSIDE THE CURRENT is a Q+A series where I ask the same questions from women in the creative field to reflect on what is changing in their lives and how they are relating to those movements. I’d love to know who you feel inspired by and bring you insights to their inner world… Hit reply to this email and drop a couple lines of that artist or creator <3