Ylva Binder was born in Sweden in 1971, but for the past 25 years has lived in Spain, France and, the UK. Recently returned back to her homeland and the village where she was born, she is once again close to the natural canvas that inspires her photography.

Binder’s background is in design, advertising and management – and has always involved the manipulation of images, but she feels her evolving interest in the purely aesthetic possibilities of image making is the inevitable result of a quest for something more meaningful in her life.  And she has chosen a particularly fruitful area to explore – the natural world.  “That’s where you find the simplest, the most beautiful and the most unattainable things in life,” she notes.  “At the same time, there’s a sense of space that I personally need.  I find it reassuring and inspiring.”

Nature has always been art’s primary inspiration, so it’s easy to gauge an artist’s point of view by the way they handle their source material. Binder’s vision is characterized by a focus on tiny, telling details – a reflection, a flash of sunlight, pearls of dew on a leaf, the glittering flow of water over tiny pebbles, the tracery of cracks in a sheet of ice ….She looks for the elemental patterns in nature, then, as she says, she “points and shoots.”  There are no tricks involved.

Binder prints in large formats and on a range of materials to bring depth to her pictures.  Dislocated from their natural sense of scale, her intimate fragments of nature take on an abstract, jewel-like intensity.

During her career of 25+ years she kept a diary and wrote down her everyday reflections in life. In this blog she is combining the two.

Enjoy – Every Day is Beautyful!

All pictures and text is the sole right of ylva binder and may not be published without her agreement