STYLE DOSSIER

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RUQAYYAH ALBAARI

[Jungle Fever] -- Another adventure in the city. Each shoot is an adventure to me because it allows me to get more acquainted with the city that I will be calling 'home' for the next few years -- at least. This, was a particularly windy day, more windy than your normal day in New York City. I was headed to the outer boroughs on this gusty, cold morning. A borough that I have become quite familiar with over the past year. Perhaps, its a foreshadow to my burgeoning future. I activate the GPS on my iPhone and once pointed in the right direction, I let the forceful winds carry me down the avenue, across the street, and to the building where I would inexorably meet the not so girl next door. 

Ruqayyah Albaari, you may know or have heard her referred to as 'Ruru Jungle'. Ruru is like a drug, a fever...shooting her once is like having your first taste. Her eyes, hair, languid poses draw you in an uncontrollable state of artistic infatuation. No, you can't just shoot her once. With the first release of your shutter, you are magnetized. But one wouldn't complain. How could you? Whilst you are enchanted in this mystical fantasy, she leads you, pulls you deep into 'the jungle'. Thoughts of Narnia come to mind. You want to keep her your little secret, locked and hidden away by a facade of something ordinary but underneath...behind those doors is this ethereal wonderland you could get lost in for hours. Ruru is someone I can test the limits with. She evokes something in my creative state of mind that I can't quite put my finger on, but whatever it is, unlike Narnia, it is very real.

Harmonic sounds repetitiously tingle my eardrums. "My roommate is a vocalist" says Ruru as if tapping into my inner thoughts of bewilderment as to the source of this strange, yet enchanting sound wafting throughout the apartment. It's not everyday that I hear of someone being a vocalist. It made me almost want to meet this mystery woman with the variety of octaves in the adjacent room. Now that that's settled, I began to feel out the space and let it speak to me. I love natural light and it has been the foundation of my photography since inception. Only recently, for features only, have I had a dedication to anything but. Having said that, I notice a few rays of light streaming from a window in Ruru's bedroom. I think to myself, why not make use of nature's beauty and shoot her in the window? It was at that moment, that I knew that I had to do a mostly natural light shoot. It just wouldn't be the same, if I had photographed her like everyone else. Then again, she is not like every one else. In fact, no two people are alike. I shoot with more feeling, less methodical...and so I just went with it. I ended up with some truly haunting photographs that are moody and dark, but with a strange and inexplicable beauty. Wouldn't you agree?

-S

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