“Working primarily through staged self-portraiture and portraiture, Patty creates rich vibrant photographs that envision the world in a transformative light. Patty loves to create in the boundaries between real life and the otherworldly, the surreal and the fantastic.” (About Patty Maher)
Notes:
- Patty Maher is a fine art and conceptual photographer based in Caledon, Ontario. This photo from Instagram is titled “And Then You Just Let Go“. You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and her blog @ Patty Maher Fine Art Photography.
- Don’t miss: “Phlearn Interviews Patty Maher” for background on Maher, her work and creative process.

I’ve mostly seen her photography here, on your blog.
It’s breathtaking. Unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
Breathtaking. Mystical. Haunting. Her work, her art, is amazing.
Yes, ALL that.
A reflection of what is inside of her.
I see beauty, transparency and endless depth.
Your musical words and her musical paintings are a perfect match.
Her words. Her portraitography. Her magic. My cut and paste! 😃
Then you do one Hellova cut and paste job!
Laughing! King of Scrapbooking!
So very difficult in letting go the things or people we hold dear…for they may never return. As for those things that are most harmful to us, we can only hope that they do not.
-Alan
And yet, let go we must….
Yes, sadly for the good.
-Alan
What a beautiful composition !
It is!
“Letting go” is sometimes a very good thing. It can be applied to so many things and often results in lowering one’s stress level.
Yes…
Glad to see your images are still nice and wide… 😀
I’d be mortified to even let one slide by with you watching. 😆
I’m not sure I would associate letting go with a balloon out of hand!
There is another expression, I believe, for “letting go” of what is bad for us.
What we love dearly, the Un-let-go-able, is more like leaves falling in autumn. It comes back.
“Letting go” is on of the biggest psychological myths. There is no such thing.
Oh come on. Letting a balloon go, is the universal symbol of letting go! 😆
And as to a myth, I want to disagree, I do, but I’m afraid you are right, even if the remaining thread, is a thin filament.
There is no thread. It’s not like that.
Take that from a woman, mother, who had to let go of the Un-let-go-able!
It grew back from under my nails like baby leaves do in spring.
😉
Smiling. Grew back from under my nails like baby leaves. GREAT.
I believe that the image can remain but no longer be harmful. This occurs where there has been forgiveness involved for whatever happened.
Thanks Sawsan
Thank you Marie.
I love this photographer—the unearthly red hair and dead-white skin.
So me too!
that is where I live, between otherworldly and real life….
Ha. So me too….
stunning work – looks like a beautiful painting –
Agree. Fantastical is right.
I love that one cannot see the expression the girl’s face, only her body language. Those tight shoulders.
She manages to caoture those feelings so well from a faceless subject. What talent.
The photo to me, makes me ponder. It seems that the object of the photo is the assumed horizon…and perhaps in her view she sees the horizon as the limit …while the red balloon, lifting, is venturing out into the beyond…
Never saw it that way but now that you point it out, I can see it that point if view.
and the red of her hair and the red balloon, the sapphire blue dress and the blue shoes which are one with the earth, the blue of the sky just beyond her reach and she physically allows the balloon to float on to the freedom beyond, perhaps symbolically it is her? And I know that my point of view, respected 🙂
me and symbolism, reading into it again
I so love red hair,,,coming from a family of red heads!
Beautiful!! Really a fine art!
Agree!