In Love and Death
By Catharina Christiana
What do you see when looking at a painting in a museum? Usually it depicts a story within literature or the Bible, a monumental time in history, or it’s just an idea capturing a person, thing, or place like a portrait, still life, or landscape in a visually pleasing way. Whether it be Renaissance, Romanticism, or in this particular case, Pre-Raphaelite, the paintings of Ophelia in the mid to late 1800s by John Everett Millais, Friedrich Wilhelm Theodor Heyser, and John William Waterhouse are based on a character from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, depicting her tragic death where she falls into a stream and dies due to love. At first glance, you see something whimsical, dreamy and beautiful but when you see the woman in water, there’s a sense of tragedy and loss, sadness, foreboding because she’s departed from the living realm or is about to and has accepted and came to terms with that fate.
Regenerated and reborn again after a tumultuous relationship, I chose to escape and explore into a realm my mind goes to more often than not as a hopeless romantic and daydreamer. Inspired by Pre-Raphaelite paintings and Shakespeare, with an element of romance and peace, there’s a theme of love and death in my photography series. Combining my love of color and appreciation of nature, I captured various stories and forms of love like true, young, old, eternal, engagement, marriage, honeymoon, divorce, summer fling, cheating, breaking up, and moving on. These are all different scenarios in which we find ourselves in at one point or another in our lives but not everyone lives a life long enough to experience everything love can do to us. In Love and Death is my own version of tragic female characters within a play in my head. They all literally have a crystal heart surrounded by symbols that give clues to their story in the form of color, flowers, fruit, and other objects. The diptychs of the models with nature are symbolic of the beauty in death. Death itself is something pure and natural as if it’s meant to be, which is what exactly fate forecasts for us. It reminds us to accept death, that it’s part of life and living.
In Love and Death is about various aspects of love and what it can ultimately make us do if it’s strong enough. This series has been, in a way, my own journey from the hurt of my last relationship of hell to then finally falling in love with the love of my life in what seems like heaven. Each of these tragic females are a part of my own story of what was, what is, and what will be, encompassing both fact and fiction of my own life. It goes to show, love can make you do just about anything, much like creating a whole series about it that may be the death of me. But it may be the light needed for you.
Objective
There are 12 crystals, 12 locations, 12 models, and 12 stories to tell. My goal for In Love and Death is to escape into another reality as a daydreamer and hopeless romantic, exploring the many forms of love and sharing that experience with the viewer. It depicts all the different aspects of love including true, young, old, eternal, engagement, marriage, honeymoon, divorce, summer fling, cheating, breaking up, and moving on. To convey these ideas in a poetic and painterly manner, I utilized my obsession with color and utmost adoration of nature while presenting symbols as clues to the story being told of each tragic female character portrayed. I illustrated the series as diptychs of models in streams paired with landscapes to remind us of the beauty in death. Death is only a natural part of life and living, even when the cause is due to love. Any and all that have ever been in love can hopefully find a piece of themselves in this series.
Chelsea- Young Love
Young love is fiery and passionate. It’s a youthful, courageous energy that hits us hard because it’s like our first time experiencing love. In that way, it changes and transforms us to look at life differently as well as ourselves. We question if it’s love or lust. It brings us current joy but doesn’t last forever.
Haley- Moving On
Moving on after being in a relationship is like the change of season. It’s something we need strength and confidence to get through which takes time but determination and will power perseveres. Once there, it’s an exciting time of renewal and warmth, where we can finally accept what's done. No longer bitter and cold, this enthusiasm for the future gives us hope.
Breanna- Honeymoon
A honeymoon is one of the happiest times of your life with your loved one, right after your wedding day. Celebrating your friendship and companionship as lifelong partners with all the pomp and abundance of this joyful period of pure love. If luck is well played, the weeklong escapade can prove to be fertile and fortunate. The start to a hopeful future.
Mary- True Love
True love is what we face obstacles and hardships to finally get to that gives us the knowledge and wisdom to learn and grow from as a person. This is the rebirth or renewal we get in life that starts a new chapter for us. It’s everything that can be, what we hoped for and promised ourselves. It’s loving someone so much that we’d be willing to die for them.
Susan- Eternal Love
Widowment showcases eternal love in all of its purity after a lifelong commitment to the love of your life. It’s through this tragedy and loss that we have this clarity of thought to realize what was and is, what we had and lost. Knowing we’ve at least gotten to experience real everlasting love gives us that light into darkness that’s needed to get through this time.
Megan- Old Love
Old love is when you’ve wasted your whole life on all the wrong ones and finally end up with the right one. It hits like a dream come true and is better than you can imagine, more inspiring than any love story. Such a change and transformation to finally experience the wealth and prosperity that was missing. It’s so innocent and pure, with affection you never thought you could endure.
Robin- Engagement
A planned engagement to a fixed marriage is the least of anyone’s wants or desires. The only good of it would be to play the game right in order to win power. You’d need all the hope you can muster for this long and arduous task to accomplish such ambition while maintaining a calm and cool collection amongst the array of what seems to be a celebration.
Marissa- Marriage
Marriage is a big monumental change in one’s life. A time of purification and cleansing where you’re starting brand new on a whole other endeavor. The greatest honor combined with absolute happiness in the most lovely and graceful of moments. Where a woman can feel the utmost feminine showered in kindness from everyone.
Christine- Breaking Up
Breaking up because one no longer loves the other can make us want to live no longer, where death becomes too familiar to us in our minds. Dark evil thoughts consume us because it’s comforting. Feeling so powerless during a time of mourning and hoping one night, light will lead us into the next world to transform to immortality and have the love and respect we deserve.
Michelle- Divorce
This is about love falling apart, what was once a marriage, now a divorce. It’s a time for looking inward and turning to spirituality to a force that’s dark and evil. Through this change there’s growth and expansion, regenerating into someone stronger and better. Despite the despair and mourning of this loss, there’s something to look forward to in the darkness.
Desirea- Summer Fling
A summer fling, when all that you want is for it and summer to never end. Free as a bird with all the positivity flowing through your wings. All the luck is needed to make this an everlasting happiness. Wanting this mere hook up to be a more reliable relationship despite its strength and passion, it’s still not really there because what it is isn’t forever.
Ana- Cheating
Cheating is like an awful sin where we’re looking for sympathy and forgiveness from our partner as well as within ourselves. Hoping to find some sort of innocence in this impure act. Such a deed breaks all promises and all that was to be written. After everything is over and done with, we just want peace and love again.
