ETEREA - 2020
Etérea, the Spanish word for ethereal, captures the quality that emerges when something is so delicate, so rare, and so completely real that it stops you in place. Aldara Ortega felt it in the Tulum jungle, camera in hand, watching women reach for each other in the water. No direction. No performance. No filter. Just human beings choosing each other with complete honesty and care. That is what she witnessed. That is what she photographed. That is what this body of work holds.
The project unfolded in 2020, when Ortega left New York City for a holistic center in Tulum, in the lush jungle of the Yucatán Peninsula, in search of nature, open air, and open water. It was a moment when the world was forced into its own kind of silence, and in that silence, something extraordinary became possible.
She gathered with a group of women, and together they went into the water. These women were not models assembled for a concept. They were friends, a true sisterhood, already bonded to one another through real life, long before a camera was ever introduced.
Underwater, surrounded by stillness, Ortega watched them reach for each other naturally, instinctively, the way humans do when agenda and obligation finally fall away. It was a connection she was privileged to document.
Women reaching toward each other. Women holding each other up rather than pulling each other down. In a world that often rewards appearance, credentials, and charm over presence, these women chose honest connection and genuine belonging.
When Ortega returned to New York and saw what the water had revealed, she sat very still for a long time. The turquoise water, the surface reflections dancing across skin, the women soft and present, held without judgment by the water and by one another. Nothing had been directed. She had only been there, holding her breath, witnessing.
Ortega approached Holistika, the holistic hotel where the series was photographed, and asked for a residency to showcase the work. She returned for several weeks and installed the work in nature. The photographs were printed on treated fabric and hung from the trees, above the pool, in the open air, in the very jungle where they were born. The work had been created outdoors, and it returned outdoors. That felt like the only honest way to show it.
Etérea is about human connection and sisterhood. Each image holds its own quality of tenderness, of moving together, of choosing each other. What unites them all is trust: trust between the women in the water, trust between muse and camera, and trust in the moment itself. These are not constructed images. They are witnessed ones.
"In my work, nudity is never exposure; it is the courageous removal of armor. To be seen in your fullness, without the costume the world asks you to wear, is the most whole-human act I know. These images are not about desire. They are about recognition. One woman saying to another: I see you. All of you. And you are enough" Aldara Ortega.
The project unfolded in 2020, when Ortega left New York City for a holistic center in Tulum, in the lush jungle of the Yucatán Peninsula, in search of nature, open air, and open water. It was a moment when the world was forced into its own kind of silence, and in that silence, something extraordinary became possible.
She gathered with a group of women, and together they went into the water. These women were not models assembled for a concept. They were friends, a true sisterhood, already bonded to one another through real life, long before a camera was ever introduced.
Underwater, surrounded by stillness, Ortega watched them reach for each other naturally, instinctively, the way humans do when agenda and obligation finally fall away. It was a connection she was privileged to document.
Women reaching toward each other. Women holding each other up rather than pulling each other down. In a world that often rewards appearance, credentials, and charm over presence, these women chose honest connection and genuine belonging.
When Ortega returned to New York and saw what the water had revealed, she sat very still for a long time. The turquoise water, the surface reflections dancing across skin, the women soft and present, held without judgment by the water and by one another. Nothing had been directed. She had only been there, holding her breath, witnessing.
Ortega approached Holistika, the holistic hotel where the series was photographed, and asked for a residency to showcase the work. She returned for several weeks and installed the work in nature. The photographs were printed on treated fabric and hung from the trees, above the pool, in the open air, in the very jungle where they were born. The work had been created outdoors, and it returned outdoors. That felt like the only honest way to show it.
Etérea is about human connection and sisterhood. Each image holds its own quality of tenderness, of moving together, of choosing each other. What unites them all is trust: trust between the women in the water, trust between muse and camera, and trust in the moment itself. These are not constructed images. They are witnessed ones.
"In my work, nudity is never exposure; it is the courageous removal of armor. To be seen in your fullness, without the costume the world asks you to wear, is the most whole-human act I know. These images are not about desire. They are about recognition. One woman saying to another: I see you. All of you. And you are enough" Aldara Ortega.
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