Carla Coulson • Press
Finding the Light
A selection of conversations, profiles and features across the world's most beloved titles —where editors, writers and readers have fallen for the work of one of Australia's most celebrated photographers.
Her iconic photographs have become collectible items for fine-art fans worldwide.
— MARIE CLAIRE
Carla Coulson, at 35, she walked away from a successful Sydney business and said yes to a completely different life, arriving in Florence with a camera she barely knew how to use on manual. What followed was a quarter-century of images that have appeared in the world’s finest magazines, a string of celebrated books published with Penguin, and a body of fine-art work that has found its way onto walls from Paris to Sydney, New York to Athens.
Press and media have long been drawn to Coulson’s story — not just because her photographs are beautiful, but because the life behind them has been an adventure. From her now-iconic Italian coastal series to the sold-out Young Girl in Bloom prints; from the lush botanicals of Rewilding to the devastating tenderness of her series The Beauty of Living and Dying — the world’s editors keep returning to ask: how do you do it? How do you create art with meaning?
Below you will find a curated selection of interviews, profiles and features — from Harper’s Bazaar and Marie Claire to House & Home Canada, Flower Magazine Australia, Dolce Magazine, Pop Photo, International Traveller and beyond — that tell that story, in her words and theirs.
As Seen In
Selected Press & Features
Dolce Magazine
Carla Coulson: Journey to Joy
By Estelle Zentil • 1 June 2022
The full arc of Coulson’s extraordinary life — from a million-dollar Sydney business that left her hollow, through illness, reinvention and the aha moment that crystallised into her most beloved series. A rare, candid account of what it truly means to transform a crisis into a creative turning point.
Flower Magazine
Carla Coulson’s Life in Bloom
By Anna Mahan Black • June 2026
Photographer Carla Coulson is known for taking images that can transport you around the world, but in her latest two series, she focuses on the beauty of florals and the stories they tell.
Home Beautiful Australia
Inside the dreamy Queenslander-inspired home built after a devastating renovation setback
Penny Carroll • 19 May 2026
This beautifully reimagined Queenslander-inspired family home blends timeless French country elegance with relaxed Australian living, creating a warm and inviting sanctuary filled with character and thoughtful design. Among the carefully curated interiors, Carla's fine art print, Centred In Self, features in the home, adding a calming, contemporary touch to the layered aesthetic.
Canadian House & Home
Designer Orsi Panos Renovates Her Circa-1855 Heritage Home
Lisa van de Geyn • 10 October 2025
Designer Orsi Panos lovingly restored her circa-1855 heritage home in Whitby, Ontario, transforming it into a soulful retreat inspired by the timeless charm of English cottage interiors. Rich layers of colour, collected antiques and beautifully preserved architectural details celebrate the home's history while creating a warm, inviting atmosphere. Sitting proudly atop the original Victorian stone fireplace in her living room, Carla's fine art print, I Believe In Me, adds a thoughtful contemporary touch to this stunning historical home.
Harper's Bazaar
Happy Snaps
By Eliza O'Hare • April 2017
An Australian photographer living an Italian life channels her dual identity into images that celebrate her new everyday life.
Algarve Plus Magazine
A Collaboration in Bloom
By Sally Dixon • November 2025
How grief, flowers, and the hands of lisbon grandmothers transformed a personal farewell into an art form that can adorn your walls.
Marie Claire
The Stylish Woman Behind the Lens
By Nicola Moyne • 5 July 2017
A gorgeous profile in which Coulson discusses following her heart to Florence, her love affair with the Leica M6 and M7, the humanist photographers who shaped her eye — from Doisneau to Cartier-Bresson — and why she believes the beach and flowers are the most honest subjects in the world.
Everly Magazine
The Power of Yes
Cover Story • May 2020
A cover story exploring the single word that changed Coulson’s life irrevocably — and how she has since built a movement around it. Her eight Penguin-published books, her award-winning coaching program Yes, Yes, Yes, and her mission to reconnect women over 40 with their passion, creativity and power.
International Traveller
How I Travel: With Photographer Carla Coulson
Interview • January 2020
From a four-year-old girl walking across a country tarmac with her teddy bear, to shooting the Amalfi Coast for international publications — Coulson reflects on what travel has given her, the art of packing light, and why she believes the most important journey is always the one back to yourself.
Pop Photo
Floral Portraits That Capture the Beauty — and Fragility — of Being a Young Woman
Marissa Wu • 4 May 2022
A deep-dive into the making of Jeune Fille en Fleur: how Coulson stumbled onto the idea via morning iPhone walks through Paris, why she abandoned the rigid fashion-world setup, and how working with real young women — not professional models — gave the series its extraordinary emotional charge.
The Work
Bodies of Work
YOUNG GIRL IN BLOOM
Inspired by the tender, trembling threshold between girlhood and womanhood, this sold-out series of fine-art portraits — each girl hidden behind a voluptuous seasonal bouquet — carries names like I Believe in Me, Great Future Ahead and Standing Her Ground. A visual mantra. A love letter to becoming.
ITALIAN VACATION
A voluptuous riot of colour, heat and the sea. Shot across the Amalfi Coast and Puglia, this series captures the irreplaceable geometry of Italian beach life — the arched lines of beach umbrellas, emerald water, the philosophy of il dolce far niente lived, never merely spoken. Nostalgia you can hang on a wall.
REWILDING
In Rewilding, Carla Coulson turns her lens to the organic world, detailed botanicals of extraordinary emotional depth, where nature is not backdrop but the subject. These are not only floral fine art photography prints for homes that want to feel grounded, alive, and connected to something larger than the room.
CELEBRATING IBIZA
Known to many for its legendary nightlife and glamour, Ibiza reveals another side entirely through Carla Coulson's lens: crystalline waters rivalling the Bahamas, red rocks and white sands, and beaches that stop you mid-breath. These images are for those who know that feeling — and for those who have yet to discover it.
THE BEAUTY OF LIVING AND DYING
Carla Coulson’s most intimate and courageous body of work — a documentary series that looks unflinchingly at the full sweep of life, from its most luminous moments to its most sacred threshold. Shot with her signature warmth and radical tenderness, it asks us to consider what it truly means to be alive.
WATER JUNGLE
Sydney does colour differently from anywhere else on earth. The ocean pools carved into the sandstone headlands at Bondi, Bronte, and Coogee. These Sydney beach photography prints are large-scale, luminous, and vivid, the ocean pools, the beaches, the water as it actually looks under Australian light. Not muted. Not filtered. Quintessentially Sydney.
DOLCE FAR NIENTE
Carla Coulson’s Dolce Far Niente collection captures this feeling with the precision that only comes from someone who has lived it. Italian lifestyle photography prints that hold a specific light, a particular ease, a sense of beauty that is not performed but simply present.For interiors that document photography, calm, and the unhurried feeling of a long Italian afternoon.
Square BEaches
Square Beaches strips away the horizon line and the familiar sweep of coast, and finds something more essential, colour, texture, the geometry of water and shore rendered in a format that feels both intimate and graphic. Shot across the Mediterranean and beyond, these prints work as pure visual objects paired in two, compelling in a contemporary space or in a minimal interior.
Editorial Work has appeared in
Publications
Harper’s Bazaar · Marie Claire · Gourmet Traveller · Domain Australia · Vogue Entertaining & Travel · Inside Out · Collezioni · Australian House & Garden · Home Beautiful · International Traveller · House & Home Canada · Pop Photo · Dolce Magazine · Everly Magazine · Flower Magazine Australia
MEDIA & INTERVIEW ENQUIRIES
For Media & Interview Enquiries
Carla Coulson is available for interviews, podcast conversations, editorial features and speaking engagements. She speaks from genuine experience on photography, creativity, the courage of reinvention, fine-art print making, and empowering women to live a fully expressed life.