Bloom Keeper

Suri People, Omo Valley, Ethiopia

2023

Edition of 6: 30in x 20in (76.2 x 50.8cm)
Edition of 6: 48in x 32in (121.9 x 81.3cm)
Edition of 6: 60in x 40in (152.4 x 101.6cm)
Edition of 6: 75in x 50in (190.5 x 127cm

Some portraits whisper louder than words.

This is the first time I’ve released a portrait in sepia—a choice I made not for nostalgia, but for reverence. The softness of sepia draws the eye inward, toward feeling. It strips away distraction and holds the moment like a breath suspended in time.

She is a young woman of the Suri tribe in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley—a region where culture blooms against the backdrop of raw, untamed land. In this image, she stands adorned with white flowers, delicately woven into her hair and gathered gently in her hands. Her face is painted in the traditional Suri way—a living canvas of identity and expression, passed down through generations of women who know the language of the body, the earth, and the gaze.

She does not smile.
But her eyes do.

There’s a light in them—subtle, confident, just barely held back. It’s not performance. It’s presence. The way she holds the bouquet near her face, not as decoration, but as something to be shared, something alive. It reminded me that beauty doesn’t need to shout to be heard. Sometimes, it simply is.

What always surprises me—what delights me, really—is how women, all over the world, despite hardship, exhaustion, or silence, still choose to be beautiful. Not for anyone else, but for themselves. To adorn, to arrange, to paint, to bloom—it's an instinct I understand as a woman. It’s a quiet declaration of selfhood, a way of saying: I am here. I matter. I carry grace even in struggle.

The title of this piece is Bloom Keeper—a name that honors more than just the flowers in her hands. She is the keeper of traditions, of feminine strength, of ancestral knowledge written not in books but in pigment, in posture, in the placement of each petal. Through her, beauty becomes a form of resistance, and culture is not only remembered—it is worn, carried, breathed.

This portrait is not just about the flowers, the paint, or even the girl herself—it’s about the space between strength and softness. About the power of being still, of being seen in your own terms, in your own skin.

Sepia, I found, is not just a tone.
It’s a feeling—a warmth, a hush, a way of saying: this moment matters.

And in this one, she reminds us that identity can be quiet, that pride can bloom gently, and that joy often begins not with a loud gesture, but in the clarity of our eyes.