This little vial, along with a few drops of anti-coagulant, is filled with blood. My blood. I needed some for a photography project I’m working on, so I got a friend of mine in the medical industry to take it from me.
Now I’ve both figuratively and literally bled for my work.
Babies seem to have a different expression every second, and the expressions are so innocent. They hide nothing. I like to think each expression reveals the drifting thoughts going on in their tiny little brains. Rather difficult to photograph because the face they wear when you press the shutter release button is invariably different from the one you get.
Rosella here is half-Persian, half-Caucasian. Aside from being so cute you could chew her cheeks off, you can already tell how beautiful her mixed blood is going to make her.
Some more practice with photographing couples. Ellen and Ziny are both med students who used to be roommates. They happened to be in Ottawa at the same time for internships at different hospitals, so it was the perfect opportunity to get them both together for a few shots.
Getting black hair and clothes to show up against a black background is very tricky. I suspect darker textures need their own dedicated light source to increase the exposure.
The woman I’ve been looking for my entire life.
Her name was Christine. She was thin lipped. Frail limbed. Not the least bit camera shy, as she pulled her shirt up to expose a breast, like she had fallen on the grass this way and the folds in her clothes rearranged themselves on her body.
Here she is on a horse in the night. Here she is, grim-faced, cradling her son. There was a scar on her neck from a suicide attempt years earlier, and through a series of photographs, you could see the scar heal.
For seven years she was married, before she successfully jumped to her death from the 9th floor of an apartment in East Berlin.
This is someone who understood his art, his morbidity, his need to capture her suicide in a frame, then publish the image of her body on the pavement, looking down from the 9th floor, along with insouciant pictures of a teacup, a playground, a tank, three plants.
And as soon as I had found her, she’s gone.
Should I be happy that she existed? Should I be sad that she’s gone? Should I be punished for comparing the women I’ve had to her?
Is this painful, or beautiful, or both?
Playing around with black-and-white, an off-camera flash, and a nice Cuban cigar.
Sometimes, enjoying life is as simple as this.