‘Becoming Heartbreak and Stone’ Photographing in Venice & The Pros and cons of Having a hard exterior.

one pale woman all alone,
The daylight kissing her wan hair,
Loitered beneath the gas lamps’ flare,
With lips of flame and heart of stone.- Oscar Wilde

How often do we put our barriers up too high? Hoping to keep something out that may seem dark and frighting, but could be the very thing we need in our life; destined for an open invitation to be apart of something valuable in our lives. Too often I think I feel this way about love- choosing a life of hiding from the beauty it could possess. 

I decided to create a photo inspired by this idea, the idea of having a hard outer shell, thinking this is easier and safer, when instead, it prevents you from opening up to new possibilities. I am very much guilty of this and hens forth, feeling like I’m incapable of feeling and at the same time, overly emotional!

I want to be able to stand face to face with these flourishes of feeling, look them in the eyes and get to know them.

-o-O-o-

This photo was a very spontaneous moment in finding inspiration in some metal flowers we had in our apartment, whilst staying in Venice, and the beauty the architecture around us held. The also beautiful Silk kindly got on board with my idea and became my stone love-stres. I have loved creating with romantic themes to inspire the visuals (people pointing that out in my work as a consistent theme is helping to reassure that this is coming across) but I am mostly enjoying twisting what that thematic truly means; experimenting with twisting the definition and what it means to me exactly, and the personal experiences I’ve had with heartbreak. So creating a more tragic, theatrical image where she was strucken by love- hindered from its absence, is a more personal and subtle way of creating with such a powerful theme. This was shot at sunrise on our last day, on a bridge by our apartments, but in my mind- it was in the depths of italy, at the heart of sunrise, frozen in time.