MY yogi sister Nathalie Dipold is a striking-looking woman – legs for days, big blue eyes and breasts like clusters of grapes.
It’s hard to believe someone with such natural beauty ever had self-esteem issues.
Natty, as she is lovingly known at our shared workplace The Yoga Hive, is anxious about her first-ever exhibition in Surry Hills.
RAW BEAUTY includes 27 images, five pieces of jewellery, massage balls and a video.
All photographs are self-taken images of Natty naked.
The exhibition is the fruits of dedicated practice, she says, where a shy young woman learnt to love her body.
The 34-year-old has been taking photos of herself since she was four, saying this was how she would spend her Friday nights.
“When I got older and hated my body so much, I had to go back in front of the lens and behind the lens.”
With a 10 second timer she would line the shots up and get into gear; a hobby she describes as a meditation.
“One morning it would hit me that today is a photo day and I would listen to that.”
She’d spend up to two hours taking photos of herself until she was too tired to continue.
Natty was never a fan of make-up and “fake stuff”.
“Here, being naked means truth to me – no make-up, no post edits to the body, just the real light, the natural body and here we have RAW BEAUTY.”
Natty was born at home, and says she has always been “a bit of a nudie”.
“I love the human body. Before I started these I began art modelling. So I guess it made sense to make my own art with my own body nude.”
Clicking through Natty’s photos, I was surprised at how confronting it was seeing an outcrop of her pubic hair in one shot.
“There is a saying that art is made to incorporate the viewer, question the viewer or stir something inside the viewer,” she says.
“Why and when did hair become so confronting? In a world where there is a bunch of fake, being real and natural is sometimes alarming, like when girls have hairy armpits, or moustaches,” she says.
Natty says the pubic hair is there to show that she is not ashamed of herself, and to remind women it is okay to have hair.
“When I was 11 I got my first pubic hair,” she says.
“I was shy and embarrassed and told the girls at school. They laughed at me (I also had boobs) and they began to make fun of me. I was sooo embarrassed I cut it off and told them it disappeared.
“Then they called me a liar, and it was here I began to hate myself for being too honest and so my pubescent-self started to go down this road of self-hate.”
RAW BEAUTY’s underlying message is “be you”.
“Be natural, be the wild and free spirit that you truthfully are because when you do, you find your tribe and will be praised in all your colours.”
From your tribe at The Yoga Hive Northside and Southside, thank-you for being you, Natty.
RAW BEAUTY, Tap Gallery, 259 Riley St, Surry Hills, opens 24 September 6pm, runs til 29 September.
Yoga teacher, skydiver, martial artist and journalist. Yoga keeps her centred and reinforces her core belief that the greatest gift to each of us is ourselves. When Dawn isn’t teaching yoga, she works as a skydive camerawoman, grapples with her mates at Gracie Barra Shellharbour, and does media and promotions for stuff she loves.
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