Branches of a Tree in Winter
Photography is a medium of love and loss. As Carol Mavor suggests, the photograph is an amorous catastrophe, severed from time, yet loved for holding time, umbilically connected to its referent. A picture of a lover is stolen from the original like a thin layer of skin. Having been on over 100 dates since I moved to London 4 years ago, I decided to reconnect with my former lovers. We spoke about our time together, why things between us unraveled and how life has been since then. A melancholic journey, the project empowered me to finally come out to my parents after a decade of unspoken truths. The work combines portraits of the men I once desired, stills from LGBT films with typewritten quotes from my partner at the time and relics I have saved as mementos. Branches of a Tree in Winter touches upon nostalgia and retrospect, lost love and times forever gone, but it is also hopeful. After all, these men agreed to collaborate, expecting nothing in return.
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Words by Eugénie Shinkle:
how did we begin.
what were you to me – a profile and a few careless words,
a smile and a possibility,
the touch of a finger on a screen
maybe
and in a different time and place, a more decisive gesture
the gaze clinging,
the flicker of a hand on skin
hesitate
it’s dark outside
come close
and again
flesh measured against an image – you become
a hand with a fingerprint, a mouth, a scent,
a face and a familiar outline and a rush of words,
words after words, afterwards
eyes, all of it
a long look, a lick
the heat of you
all the time in the world in no time at all
I gather scraps to hold you close
a loop of your hair – an olive stone – a train ticket
and photographs
the same place we began,
but the image is filled with you now
a smile and a promise
your profile against a background of others
my breath clouds the ground glass
I turn the negative over
and trace your shape with my fingertip,
follow your outline in the emulsion’s raised edge
close but not you
so many between you and now.
