Thirty years ago, a photographer got in touch with me when I was running the gallery at New York City’s Dance Theater Workshop, and sent me — by mail — some 35mm slides of her handmade photographic collages. Her name was Lisa Levart, and since 2002, she has been photographing women dressed as goddesses from creeds and mythologies of cultures around the world.
I met Lisa again in Rockland County, New York, where she and her husband, photographer Myles Aronowitz, continue to live. Our lives intersected again, most recently, on Martha’s Vineyard. In August, Lisa came for a visit with a mutual friend, artist and filmmaker Katherine Matheson. While running around with both ladies, I needed to make a stop at my friend Francesca Kelly’s home, and wanted Lisa to meet her as a potential goddess for her ongoing project. In the few minutes we spent together, Lisa and Francesca loosely agreed to a September shoot. We enjoyed our days together, and Lisa returned to New York. Then, in late September, Lisa got a cancellation and had an opening in her schedule. She travelled back to the Vineyard to photograph Francesca.
Francesca Kelly made it her mission to save the indigenous horse of India by founding Marwari Bloodlines with Raguvendra Singh in 1995 “to preserve, promulgate and promote the Marwari horse in India and abroad.” So when searching for a goddess for Francesca to portray, Lisa and Francesca agreed upon Sheravali, “one of many names attributed to the Goddess Durga, the goddess of power and her most common appellation in Rajasthan.” Francesca explained, her “given name in Rajasthan is Goravali, she who rides horses, [while] Sheravali translates literally as “she who rides the lion.’” Francesca offered to include her Indian groom, Sushil, in the photo with her. Lisa, who had never photographed horses before, was thrilled.
The Sheravali shoot was not Lisa’s first “goddess” experience on the Vineyard. She first came to Martha’s Vineyard in 2007, to photograph Rose Styron and her daughter Paola. Other Vineyarders included in her work are actress Suzanne Douglass, and interior decorator Jan Hilliard. All of Lisa’s subjects choose “to embody a goddess who has contemporary meaning in their lives.” The choice was easy for Rose and her daughter; they decided to portray the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone at Lucy Vincent beach. Their portrait, as well as those of the other 75 women included in Lisa’s book, Goddess on Earth, published in 2011, and winner of the Gold Nautilus Book Award, create a visual celebration of wisdom, courage and personal strength inspired by history’s most ancient myths.
“More and more contemporary women are enthusiastically embracing those myths as they seek to tackle life’s obstacles,” Lisa said.
Lisa’s photographs are of women ages 8-99, including doctors, designers, authors, filmmakers, psychiatrists, actresses, and students. She explores and captures how everyday women are inspired to heal, thrive, and embrace their own personal power through their connections with sacred myths. With tenacity, determination, and passion, Lisa has followed her dream of creating beautiful works of art both in her book and public multi-media installations. In 2012, Lisa began writing a regular goddess column for the Huffington Post.
On Tuesday night, before Lisa headed home, we all met for dinner at State Road, and the first edits of the portraits were unveiled. “I want to tell the story of the myth and your interpretation of it with your words,” Lisa said as she showed Francesca the photos on her Kindle.
Although there are countless images to choose from, Lisa hones in on only three images for her final edit, choosing the photos that most reflect the power of the goddess as interpreted by her subject. “I really spend a long time on each image, pulling my color out, deepening the sky,” she said. “It is not a quick process.”
“Their physicality is very important to the picture,” Lisa said of the horses.
Francesca concurred: “Horses are very hard to photograph.” In one image, they both agree the beauty comes from the “horse movement,” in another “the colors are beautiful because the horse is still, the water is still.”
“Wow,” the women at the table said as they passed it around. “That’s beautiful.” “That’s amazing.”
To learn more about Lisa Levart’s work, or to purchase her book, visit goddessonearth.com.
