Our senses allow us to connect to the world around, perceive our environment and interact with others. It’s through our senses that we collect information about our surroundings and we react physically, mentally and emotionally. Our perceptions create our reality. 

Delving into this process, Maaike Riemens and Dimphy den Otter, the creative duo behind MaD collective, and photographer Ben Beagent, have translated ROWSE’s multisensory universe into a series of images where, as in some kind of synesthesia,  colors represent the experience of smell and the emotions and memories that they evoke.

Synesthesia is derived from Greek and literally means ‘concomitant sensations’. It’s a fascinating sensory phenomenon in which a stimulus in one sense mode or cognitive pathway is interpreted in terms appropriate to some other sense mode, such as when colors become smells.

Shot in Marseille, the series pays tribute to the raw beauty of the Mediterranean landscape in all its colours, textures and smells. The sense of warmth and intimacy creates the ideal environment so you can reconnect with nature, and with yourself.