We all know how to return home. No matter how long it’s been, we find our way.
-Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Collarbone-deep in a river.
Just as the sun dips heavy behind the tree tops.
When the fireflies hum their lullabies. When solitude and stillness blanket the sky. Just before darkness.
There is a magical time. And a magical place.
I go there, I go in, and listen to the river beneath the river.
There is profound power of the most beautiful kind when we allow ourselves to break the surface. To go in. To go deeper.
To go Home.
This is not a choice. This is not an idea. Or an inspiration. Or a project.
This is my bones. This is the song of my soul. This is the story I was born to tell the way only I can tell it.
A photographer, yes. A writer, yes. But more like a river medicine woman who speaks the language of the currents and whose bones are the same as salmon’s. A spinner of stories, translator of truths. The upstream is my inhale. The riverbed, what I see on the backs of my eyelids when I close them to dream.
River Story (TM) Sessions are 90 minute sessions held in the mystical and magical waters of Austin, TX. Women, draped in beautiful while dresses, crowned in gorgeous fresh flower crowns, are photographed by Michelle Gardella while glowing in the light of a day just about to close her eyes. The images from these sessions are shared both in a private online gallery for the women to order from, and also in a public online gallery to become part of a collective art installation reaching all corners of the globe. And of course, there is also, the book.
A book. A beautifully bound, profoundly honest, and unmistakably brave collection of pages, filled with images, and reflections, from the rivers.
River Story (TM) and River Story Sessions (TM) are trademarks of Michelle Gardella. All images are registered and protected by Federal Copyright law and can not be recreated or replicated under any circumstances. 
Copyright © 2005–2015, Michelle Gardella and Michelle Gardella Photography. All rights reserved. The trademarks, logos and service marks (“Marks”) displayed on the Website or in connection with the Services are the property of Michelle Gardella . You are not permitted to use these Marks or replicate these registered photographs without the prior written consent of the third party that owns the Mark and retains the copyright.