Losing Reality; Reality of Loss

How does one experience loss? What does loss look like? Catastrophic losses usually have a face; think war photos, photos from the World Trade Center, crashes of various sorts but I am interested in personal loss. I have always been interested in alternate states of reality, but looking over my last few series, those initiated and completed since moving to the Midwest from California, I see that I am also dealing with "loss" in some form; loss of friends, home, youth, and the ultimate loss, loss of life. Death transforms us; reality shifts, but to what? I am intrigued with how a person adapts to losses in their lives; how they are absorbed by events and changed; how they experience loss. I set about to address these issues through a photographic photosynthesis in this body of work; choosing photography as the medium to help me reveal reality while at the same time transform that reality to reflect a loss. In these images, I have placed my husband (Michael) in various environments where a loss of some sort has recently occurred. Some of the losses were very specific and personal and some were of a general, universal nature reflected in an inner state of anguish and eventual acceptance.