In
All the Colors I Am Inside,
Deb Achak reflects on our relationship
with the soft, quiet voice of our intuition and the beauty of who
we are under the surface. Achak explores how our inner voice
leads us on the most surprising and glorious adventures, but to
hear it, we must quiet our brains and savor the present moment.
Bringing together human and spiritual worlds, she uses landscapes
that are rich and mysterious, the way our dreams and
meditations might feel, and portraits in which the subject is consumed
by nature, swept up by it. Achak seeks to represent the
pictorial quality of intuition using imagery that walks the line
between rare and familiar. Ultimately, the work invites us to
think less, feel more.
The Red Dress, 2019 © Deb Achak
Fallen Dahlias, 2020 © Deb Achak
From the text
All the Colors I Am Inside by Deb Achak:
The last words my mother said to me before she died were these:
''Trust your gut instincts.'' These four simple words washed over
me like stepping into a gently flowing river.
Over the decade that has followed, I've nurtured two insistent
preoccupations. One is photography, as I was caught up in a sudden
and demanding compulsion to capture real moments in time.
The other has been an expansion of my understanding of my own
embodied knowledge, a path my mother's words nudged me towards.
Since childhood, I had sensed this more mysterious way of
observing the world, but I hadn't devoted the necessary time or
seriousness to understand this gift.
All the Colors I Am Inside represents the twining together of those
two seemingly distinct endeavors. Using tools of light, time, and
color, I challenged myself to construct pictures that reference the
spark of energy and depth of wonder that pervade our interior
lives. A trail of red in the forest where I walk my dog, dandelions
moving in the wind above an abandoned bird's nest, fireworks exploding,
a giant wave crashing over me, sprinklers misting in the
moonlight, a floral bed sheet blurred around my niece. I saw beauty
in landscapes and portraiture, but I was searching for what lies
beneath the surface.
From the text Elexir by Alison Morley, Chair Emerita, Documentary
Practice and Visual Journalism Program, at ICP New York:
Pushing beyond the boundaries of the familiar, Deb Achak uses
her camera and the study of mindfulness to engage with the allure
of life's cycles. In All the Colors I Am Inside, the immediacy of each
image seduces us into Achak's constructed visual landscapes. In
this enigmatic journey, she offers a place to be quiet yet attentive
to the sun and moon, the shades of flora, the shape of a hand, a
slight movement, or dappled light falling gently on flesh.
Deb Achak is an American photographer based in Seattle, Wash.
Achak's photographs have been featured in many exhibitions
including at Winston Wächter Fine Art Seattle and New York, The
Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts, The National Museum
of Anthropology in Tabasco, Mexico, The Lishui Museum of Art
in Lishui, China, and The Sofia Photography Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria.
She was awarded a Critical Mass Top 200 finalist in 2021,
and a recipient of the Julia Margaret Cameron Award in 2023. All
the Colors I Am Inside is her debut monograph.
Exhibitions
Winston Wächter Fine Art Seattle, WA, USA, 01.11.-23.12.2023
Winston Wächter Fine Art New York, NY, USA, July-August 2024
All About Deb Achak
Shaving Practice, 2019 © Deb Achak
Wave Breaking, 2020 © Deb Achak
Sprinklers in the Moonlight, 2020 © Deb Achak
