About Yolanda
Yolanda French is a fine art photographer and narrative nonfiction writer with a significant influence from non-dual philosophies and spiritual ecology.
Influenced by conceptual, experimental, and documentary photography, her creative practice seeks to reveal the poetics of the ordinary and the sacred in the mundane.
Born and raised in Australia, Yolanda’s artistic journey traverses Western and Eastern aesthetics, and explores culture, ecology and spirituality through a non-dual lens.
Photography
Yolanda’s fine art photography is an attempt to capture the essence of non-dualism in ‘the frame.’
Her work challenges default modes of perception and ways of seeing, inviting the audience to move beyond the reductive, dualistic perspective of mass media, culture and technology.
Yolanda’s meditational art is invitation to shift from me / them, either / or, light / dark, good / bad, subject / object thinking into a holistic, non-dual, subject-subject perception of reality as it is. She strives to reflect the essential nature of unity in the multiplicity of shapes and forms that make up existence.
Her meditational work explores how to reconcile the tension of opposites that threaten to split the uninitiated psyche / soul in two. Through her own experience she has come to understand that it is only in the darkness that the human organism has the opportunity to cultivate a deeper sensing, a second sight, a true way of seeing.
Not afraid to present the darkness of the void as large amounts of negative space in photographic images, each frame is a meditation on form and feeling, presence and absence, everything and nothing.
Balancing structure with spontaneity, her portfolio moves fluidly between conceptual, experimental, and documentary practices, reflecting both the discipline and intuition of image-making.
Yolanda’s work invites viewers to look beyond the visible and engage with photography as a contemplative art form rooted in attention, stillness, and the story of human nature as it actually is.
Writing
Yolanda’s writing blurs the lines between narrative nonfiction and magical realism. Travel writing moves fluidly between interior and exterior landscapes as if they exist in the same terrain. Prose leaves the reader wondering what is dream and what is real. Essays challenge the reader to question everything, including who they believe themselves to be.
A tertiary education in the mystical language of Sanskrit, plus time spent immersed in Eastern Spiritual culture and practice, has given her a unique perspective on the manner in which words can reveal or conceal.