This is a huge topic and is something I will in no way attempt to tackle.
Love - something we all experience at some point in our lives. I personally believe that no two people have the same experience of love, something so personal and pure must feel different to each individual. Maybe that's why it's so difficult to define?
I've been thinking about how something so intense and consuming is so difficult to put in to words.
Something that you are meant to express is sometimes impossible to do fully. To write about love it not to write about emotions or thoughts, but feeling - both physical and emotional. It's the emotional feeling that is the hardest to describe, how can you put something in to words that has no physical form? Something that only you can ever experience. There are no words for something so individual.
I was wondering whether love has the same effect on photography in terms of subject matter. Is it possible to 'capture' love? or is it merely a recreation of the expectations, stereotypes and generalisations of love?
I did some research and was surprised by how difficult it was to find good photographs among the abundance of love themed images of hearts and generic couples.
I came across a few images which stood out to me and neither really scream love at you but there is something about them that I think has a deeper meaning. Maybe I have just read in to it too much, but;
This image, although technically one of the 'generic couple' photos I was just complaining about, is actually the one image that I felt powerful enough to use as an example.
Granted, it isn't the most aesthetically pleasing photo, the rooftops aren't exactly picturesque, the sky isn't perfectly clear and the couple are, well, ordinary. But actually, those are the exact reasons I like it. It's simple, effortless and surprisingly natural. Isn't that what love should be?
I love the contrast between the harsh skyline and the romance of the couple, the shoe carelessly left on the roof. The fact they're on a rooftop feels like an escape and the fact the sky isn't at all perfectly clear just adds to the intensity. Such an open expanse is impossible to comprehend, perhaps even impossible to put into words...
In all, the photo is very ordinary, but depending on what you want from it, it is capable of providing contrasts and perhaps is getting close to capturing love, or at least a fraction of it.
:)
x
I've been thinking about how something so intense and consuming is so difficult to put in to words.
Something that you are meant to express is sometimes impossible to do fully. To write about love it not to write about emotions or thoughts, but feeling - both physical and emotional. It's the emotional feeling that is the hardest to describe, how can you put something in to words that has no physical form? Something that only you can ever experience. There are no words for something so individual.
I was wondering whether love has the same effect on photography in terms of subject matter. Is it possible to 'capture' love? or is it merely a recreation of the expectations, stereotypes and generalisations of love?
I did some research and was surprised by how difficult it was to find good photographs among the abundance of love themed images of hearts and generic couples.
I came across a few images which stood out to me and neither really scream love at you but there is something about them that I think has a deeper meaning. Maybe I have just read in to it too much, but;
This image, although technically one of the 'generic couple' photos I was just complaining about, is actually the one image that I felt powerful enough to use as an example.
Granted, it isn't the most aesthetically pleasing photo, the rooftops aren't exactly picturesque, the sky isn't perfectly clear and the couple are, well, ordinary. But actually, those are the exact reasons I like it. It's simple, effortless and surprisingly natural. Isn't that what love should be?
I love the contrast between the harsh skyline and the romance of the couple, the shoe carelessly left on the roof. The fact they're on a rooftop feels like an escape and the fact the sky isn't at all perfectly clear just adds to the intensity. Such an open expanse is impossible to comprehend, perhaps even impossible to put into words...
In all, the photo is very ordinary, but depending on what you want from it, it is capable of providing contrasts and perhaps is getting close to capturing love, or at least a fraction of it.
:)
x
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