Planted

The Cleanest Touch explores the intimate connection between our bodies and the Earth. Through a reflective, immersive process, this project invites us to experience the Earth not as something separate but as an interconnected, nurturing force. Born out of a personal journey toward healing and awareness, the photographs capture the visible trace of the profound bond between our skin and the planet. The Cleanest Touch is a poetic invitation to rediscover our kinship with the Earth and awaken the deep memory of belonging that resides within us all. It’s not just a practice—it’s a lived experience that restores our relationship with the Earth, one touch at a time.

The Cleanest Touch | Veronica Olariu

The Cleanest Touch explores the intimate connection between our bodies and the Earth. Through a reflective, immersive process, this project invites us to experience the Earth not as something separate but as an interconnected, nurturing force. Born out of a personal journey toward healing and awareness, the photographs capture the visible trace of the profound bond between our skin and the planet. The Cleanest Touch is a poetic invitation to rediscover our kinship with the Earth and awaken the deep memory of belonging that resides within us all. It’s not just a practice—it’s a lived experience that restores our relationship with the Earth, one touch at a time.
The Cleanest Touch explores the intimate connection between our bodies and the Earth. Through a reflective, immersive process, this project invites us to experience the Earth not as something separate but as an interconnected, nurturing force. Born out of a personal journey toward healing and awareness, the photographs capture the visible trace of the profound bond between our skin and the planet. The Cleanest Touch is a poetic invitation to rediscover our kinship with the Earth and awaken the deep memory of belonging that resides within us all. It’s not just a practice—it’s a lived experience that restores our relationship with the Earth, one touch at a time.

The Cleanest Touch exists between our skin and Earth’s skin.

Together, they create a textured imprint through rest and gravity—a collaborative graphic art formed by us and the ground beneath us. The photos capture the visible trace of this immersive, contemplative process.

I began this project partly as a practice of self-healing from a chronic condition I’ve been dealing with for the past four years and partly as an exploration of my perception of the threshold between my body and the surrounding landscape.

Soon after, I expanded it into a guided, immersive process, inviting participants—through verbal poetic cues and questions—to gradually come home to the ground, release anything that keeps them apart from the Earth, and bond with gravity as the love force between us and our planet.

The Cleanest Touch is about awakening what already lies within: the memory of living in kinship with a living Earth. It invites us to lift the veil of our forgetfulness and hold the Earth in our hearts with love.

The immersive, contemplative process behind the photographs allows this awakening to become a lived experience, ensuring it is not forgotten.

The fundamental, ancient truth of our belonging is not remembered as a philosophy or set of principles but as something that is felt, touched, smelled—something embodied within us and permeating us from the inside out.

Thus, The Cleanest Touch lies between our skin and Earth’s skin. The ground is not dirty; it is nourishing. Our material existence sprouts from the soil, through which we are siblings to all living beings.

Our bodies are soil in the process of being nourished by the larger whole, which we, in turn, nourish.

This reflects our innate, natural generosity—an essence we cannot escape but one we can deepen through presence and awareness. The generosity of deeply resting in the act of offering our bodies as a landscape for the more-than-human mirrors how a tree serves as a landscape for us.

The Cleanest Touch explores the intimate connection between our bodies and the Earth. Through a reflective, immersive process, this project invites us to experience the Earth not as something separate but as an interconnected, nurturing force. Born out of a personal journey toward healing and awareness, the photographs capture the visible trace of the profound bond between our skin and the planet. The Cleanest Touch is a poetic invitation to rediscover our kinship with the Earth and awaken the deep memory of belonging that resides within us all. It’s not just a practice—it’s a lived experience that restores our relationship with the Earth, one touch at a time.
The Cleanest Touch explores the intimate connection between our bodies and the Earth. Through a reflective, immersive process, this project invites us to experience the Earth not as something separate but as an interconnected, nurturing force. Born out of a personal journey toward healing and awareness, the photographs capture the visible trace of the profound bond between our skin and the planet. The Cleanest Touch is a poetic invitation to rediscover our kinship with the Earth and awaken the deep memory of belonging that resides within us all. It’s not just a practice—it’s a lived experience that restores our relationship with the Earth, one touch at a time.
The Cleanest Touch explores the intimate connection between our bodies and the Earth. Through a reflective, immersive process, this project invites us to experience the Earth not as something separate but as an interconnected, nurturing force. Born out of a personal journey toward healing and awareness, the photographs capture the visible trace of the profound bond between our skin and the planet. The Cleanest Touch is a poetic invitation to rediscover our kinship with the Earth and awaken the deep memory of belonging that resides within us all. It’s not just a practice—it’s a lived experience that restores our relationship with the Earth, one touch at a time.
The Cleanest Touch explores the intimate connection between our bodies and the Earth. Through a reflective, immersive process, this project invites us to experience the Earth not as something separate but as an interconnected, nurturing force. Born out of a personal journey toward healing and awareness, the photographs capture the visible trace of the profound bond between our skin and the planet. The Cleanest Touch is a poetic invitation to rediscover our kinship with the Earth and awaken the deep memory of belonging that resides within us all. It’s not just a practice—it’s a lived experience that restores our relationship with the Earth, one touch at a time.
The Cleanest Touch explores the intimate connection between our bodies and the Earth. Through a reflective, immersive process, this project invites us to experience the Earth not as something separate but as an interconnected, nurturing force. Born out of a personal journey toward healing and awareness, the photographs capture the visible trace of the profound bond between our skin and the planet. The Cleanest Touch is a poetic invitation to rediscover our kinship with the Earth and awaken the deep memory of belonging that resides within us all. It’s not just a practice—it’s a lived experience that restores our relationship with the Earth, one touch at a time.
The Cleanest Touch explores the intimate connection between our bodies and the Earth. Through a reflective, immersive process, this project invites us to experience the Earth not as something separate but as an interconnected, nurturing force. Born out of a personal journey toward healing and awareness, the photographs capture the visible trace of the profound bond between our skin and the planet. The Cleanest Touch is a poetic invitation to rediscover our kinship with the Earth and awaken the deep memory of belonging that resides within us all. It’s not just a practice—it’s a lived experience that restores our relationship with the Earth, one touch at a time.
Words and Photography by Veronica Olariu
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