04 / MONIKA
about the author
Monika Kapelewska is a professional photographer and the owner of a portrait studio. Hundreds of women have passed in front of her lens. She has taught them to stand before a camera without the paralysing fear of being judged, and to see their own magnetic beauty in raw, unretouched frames.
Her most important transformation, though, did not happen under studio lights. It happened in the quiet of her own life. She knows paralysing self-doubt, resentment of her own body and the feeling of being less than others from the inside. She rebuilt herself through deep psychotherapy, mentoring, hypnotherapy and long solitary walks in the mountains, where she learnt to inhabit her body without a shadow of criticism.
Today she brings together developmental psychology and a photographer’s eye for the body and its emotions. She has turned old wounds into strength and authenticity, and she hands her readers the thing she once needed most herself: concrete strategies, and a daily practice of radical gentleness.