Still, Life

"Still, Life" provides a unique glimpse into the private yet universal experience of grief. Having been widowed in 2012, I chronicled my experience of loss with self-portraits and accompanying essays for over a year. The result is a deeply emotional and psychological exploration of grief, spanning 40 powerful images. Although examinations of grief are timeless, this subject matter is particularly important in our modern western culture, where death has become so far removed from our day to day lives that we no longer know how to sit with it. We don't like to think about it much less feel about it, and thus many who are grieving feel abandoned by our culture. There is a powerful movement currently underway in helping our culture learn how to re-integrate death and dying into our overall social conversations. While "Still, Life" was initially a very personal story, it has now become a piece of this movement. Portions of this project have been exhibited in hospitals, written about in publications on death and dying, and examined via blogs and video interviews with the death & dying community. Something that began as a way to make meaning out of tragedy for myself has become a way to continue a broader social dialogue and help others to see what grief might look like, and ultimately, that they are not alone when it comes into their world.