Life Of The Tree Spirit (kodama)

My name is Marija Gajić, or simply Mara how most of my friends call me. When I am not traveling, which I do very often, I live in Belgrade (Serbia). I grew up in the countryside near Vlasina Lake. Ever since childhood I have been in love with insects, trees, swamps...I am a biology student, and for the past few years my biggest passion have been dragonflies. The hunger to know more about them makes me travel a lot through Serbia and the Balkans in general...Besides Vlasina Lake, I could blame various books, movies, cartoons and animas for my nature loving personality. Hayao Miyazaki has had a great influence on my way of thinking, for what I am very grateful today.

Watching Princess Mononoke as a kid left me fascinated. Small forest spirits, Kodamas, captured my attention most. For many years after I had watched it, I had an idea floating in my mind, which I couldn’t transform into reality until last year. In Petnica Science Center, on a 3D printer, I printed a Kodama figurine and, finally,my idea became reality. My idea was to photograph Kodama among different trees... It was not of great importance to me for the tree to be old or protected by law, but rather that I found a particular tree magical at that specific moment. Also, I decided to photograph mainly using my mobile phone.

I started to photograph my Kodama in April 2015. I just loved the fact that, soon after I started, every tree seemed magical and wonderful, no matter if it was located in the center of a town or on a high mountain. It makes me happy to see that my friends also began to observe trees in a different way.

People have criticized me for using the Japanese spirit in my attempt to evoke the beauty of trees, rather than a creature from Serbian and Slavic mythology. I have realized that,regardless of the numerous interesting legends in Serbian mythology, the magic is hidden in merging creatures, legends and traditions from different parts of the world with the same goal, which is the love for trees and nature in general.

Today Hayao Miyazaki celebrates his 75th birthday!

Happy birthday and thanks!
kodaMara!

More info: kodamarrrrrra.tumblr.com