projects
"RAW: A CAREGIVER'S GRIEF"
INTRODUCTION
In the nearly a year of full time caregiving of my fiancé, after he suffered a spinal cord injury, I found myself vacillating through phases of grieving, in much the same ways as my fiancé. I was sad and angry at what he was suffering through–the loss of his body, his physical pain–and the lives we both had lost. Having to battle these loses and grief alone, and in silence, having no family or friends close by, all focus (both mine, and that of outsiders) on my fiancés recovery, and his loss, I found myself feeling levels of emotions I had never felt before. My photography was one of the many casualties lost in the wake of caregiving, and an altered life. At first I grieved for it, craving it, then coming to feel completely uninspired and void toward it. The joy in life lost.
Both out of a need for an outlet as we navigated this new life, and as a way to get back in touch with the photography that had been part of my soul, I came up with this project. I needed motivation to push me out the door; if I couldn’t do it with exuberance, I would let despair be my inspiration. The goal was to project my grief through my art by photographing aspects of the landscape that reflected my emotions–a catharsis.
The photographs in this project are not polished–in composition nor technique; they aren’t meant to be. They are an expression of raw emotions, captured in the same manner in which I experienced them–acutely, and without preparation, planning or the ability to correct; neither pristine nor pretty. The accompanied writings are a depiction of the emotion felt at the time. Though not my usual genre of capturing the beauty in nature’s landscape, and the style not my norm, few things have fulfilled me the way my creativity and photography have. To find a way back to it was like finding an old friend and therapist all at once.
Not only does art evoke emotion, but, it can also provide a cathartic respite from it for the artist.
"isolated"
An Otherwise welcoming existence, instead, clearly abandoned and isolated–a bit tattered and covered in webs and dirt. It stood all alone, the life beneath it unable to thrive and grow in its shadow, all the while, the rest of the world moved on around it, seemingly apathetic to its decay, not acknowledging its existence at all.
"stripped"
Standing after a storm, or perhaps, many storms, its protective bark cracked and torn, leaves and limbs, ripped from it. Unable to heal, still standing, but bare of anything that made it what it use to be. Its beauty and anything resembling life stripped from it, without permission nor invitation.
"Whittled"
A literal shell of it’s former self, it’s life spent perpetually battered by waves, churned in 1000 different storms, and repeatedly spit out in a new place–amongst others like it, yet alone. It can only be imagined the journeys it has taken, the amazing places it has been, and the stories I’m sure it could tell. I knew I needed to leave it there on the beach that day, for though it had been whittled down in storm after storm, it had made it this far, it would survive, still strong, albeit reshaped, and it’s journey was not complete.