Jasmine & Gasoline

Jasmine & Gasoline is a series inspired by the myth of Persephone. This time, she doesn't return to the underworld, she breaks free. Through water, gesture, and return to the body, the series traces reclamation as a way back home.

Jasmine & Gasoline reimagines the cyclical pattern of descent and return in the myth of Persephone. This time, she breaks free. These are her notes from paradise, tracing her escape from emotional underworlds toward a deeper sense of home within herself.

Photographed along coastlines and urban edges, the series portrays a charged reunion with the natural world. Water, light, and touch become her guides. A faint trace of pomegranate lingers, the old world becoming the threshold into the new. A beetle marks the path of metamorphosis. A hand on her own skin, learning it again. A figure entering the sea crosses into the body she now inhabits.

Moving between documentary, self-portrait, and landscape, the photographs slip between clarity and abstraction as identity does. The sea is both destination and threshold, a place where something long buried resurfaces. Home, here, is not a fixed location but an interior state, a self reclaimed beyond the cycles that once defined her. The camera becomes a site of reawakening, rehearsing a quiet utopia of rest, renewal, and internal bloom.

The material form extends this inquiry into return and embodiment. Water is printed on fabric, which moves and loosens what's been hardened. Stone and metal are printed on aluminum, amplifying their own surface. The landscapes that build the world of the series, flowers and industrial edges giving way to older earthen forms, are printed on wood. Each piece arrives as if recovered from the landscape the series imagines, a tender future shaped by feminine autonomy and rest.

© Ariana Zukowski - Nature’s touch
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Nature’s touch

© Ariana Zukowski - Persphone’s pomegranate
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Persphone’s pomegranate

© Ariana Zukowski - Reflections dusted in scarlet
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Reflections dusted in scarlet

© Ariana Zukowski - Shadows returning to her skin
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Shadows returning to her skin

© Ariana Zukowski - Golden metamorphosis
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Golden metamorphosis

© Ariana Zukowski - Textures of industry, softened into play
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Textures of industry, softened into play

© Ariana Zukowski - Petals wrapped in neon light
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Petals wrapped in neon light

© Ariana Zukowski - An ancient foundation
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An ancient foundation

© Ariana Zukowski - Strangers lit like votives
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Strangers lit like votives

© Ariana Zukowski - Sun stripes flickered on my lashes
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Sun stripes flickered on my lashes

© Ariana Zukowski - At the water’s edge
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At the water’s edge

© Ariana Zukowski - Salt-wrapped tangled hair
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Salt-wrapped tangled hair

© Ariana Zukowski - Foam tracing the edge of return
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Foam tracing the edge of return

© Ariana Zukowski - My Midas' touch
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My Midas' touch

© Ariana Zukowski - Voltage by the sea
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Voltage by the sea

© Ariana Zukowski - Engine buzzed, like a song in my throat
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Engine buzzed, like a song in my throat

© Ariana Zukowski - Sea’s hush still in my ears
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Sea’s hush still in my ears

© Ariana Zukowski - Reemerged silver-eyed and salty
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Reemerged silver-eyed and salty

© Ariana Zukowski - Melting back into herself
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Melting back into herself

© Ariana Zukowski - Cracked open with wings
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Cracked open with wings

Jasmine & Gasoline by Ariana Zukowski

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