Paige Coletta is a photographer and videographer based in Bozeman, Montana that is interested in the spiritual relationship with the natural world. She draws creative inspiration from the region’s landscapes, her family lineage, and her local community. Currently pursuing a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Integrated Lens-Based Media at Montana State University, Paige is steadily building a diverse portfolio that reflects her evolving artist style. Her work centers on crafting thoughtful, visually driven narratives that explore broader themes drawn from personal experience. In 2025, she debuted her first image series, At the Water’s Edge, in the Visual Communications Building on the Montana State
University campus.
University campus.
Photography is how I come into relationship with the world. It becomes a mirror, a map, a quiet conversation with whatever I'm moving through. The lessons arrive in fragments, symbols, and themes. If someone simply finds a moment of beauty in my work, that's more than enough. But what matters to me most is something that lands. Not with logic, but with feeling. I want the work to stir something, to linger. To unravel slowly, if my viewer is willing to follow the thread.
Much of what I make is influenced Internal Family Systems, a therapeutic approach that sees the mind as made up of many different parts, all guided by a deeper self. There’s often a connection to ancestry and a sense that time isn’t quite linear. I also work from an animist perspective, one that understands the world as alive and responsive. Trees, stones, and even the light entering my camera hold their own kind of consciousness. This way of seeing impacts my creative practice, inviting me to be still and listen deeply to what wisdom is being shared with me. It asks me to move through the world with more care, as if everything around me can feel my presence too.
Animism is not a new idea, nor is it mine to claim. The understanding that the world is listening and interacting with us is an ancient and deeply rooted perspective, held by many indigenous cultures long before it entered contemporary conversation. At its core, this practice is a quiet kind of resistance. It gently questions what we’ve been taught to value and opens space for other ways of seeing, sensing, and being in the world.