21 Self-Portraits of Living after Loss
This series, entitled “Still, Life” is the work of Sarah Treanor. All the photos have been used with Sarah’s expressed permission.
Sarah writes, “Shortly after the death of my fiancé in 2012, I began taking self portraits.”
Week 1 – What is Left
“I didn’t know why at first, all I knew is that some part of me needed to see myself.”
Week 2 – The Fallen
“I felt like I had died too… the images gave me proof that I was still living. A way to externally explore and express everything that was going on inside of me.”
Week 3 – Relics of our Time
“Still, Life is a project that was birthed out of those initial snapshots – one photo each week for the year of 2014 – exploring the complex emotions around the death of my partner and how to keep living on.”
Week 4 – The Gateway
“I have been using art to cope with life’s challenges nearly all my life.”
Week 5 – The Guardians
“At age nine, I lost my mother to breast cancer. Making art became my sanctuary, my escape from the pain.”
Week 6 – Desperation
In my adult life I’ve come to use creativity to cope with things I never imagined I would have to at such a young age. In my mid-twenties, I lost my father to heart and lung disease. Parentless at 26, I took up photography as an escape.
Week 7 – Hope
“I found that when I was behind the camera I went to a whole other place…”
Week 8 – The Climb
“… able to focus on the present moment and on finding the beauty right in front of me.
Week 9 – Bleeding the Darkness
“It was meditative and created a sanctuary again for me – just like other art forms did for me as a child.”
Week 10 – The Mask
“Then, in the summer of 2012, my fiancé was killed very suddenly in a helicopter crash while working as a contract pilot.”
Week 11 – Sanctuary
“I was three months shy of my 30th birthday and my whole future vanished with one phone call.”
Week 12 – Waiting
“His death changed everything about my life.”
Week 13 – Frozen
Everything.
Week 14 – Debris
“His death made me realize I had walked away from my dreams… wandered off the path.”
Week 15 – Surrender
“I left my career behind as a designer, left the city we called home, and I began again out in the country, writing and making art.”
- Week 16 – The Listening Place
“Creating things has always been the only way I’ve been able to breathe in the midst of great loss.”
Week 17 – In the Ruins
“The only resting place, and the best vantage point from which to see myself and my own journey – both the pain and the joy.”
Week 18 – Battle On
“Photography helps me find my peace, and also helps me to express parts of my story and emotions in ways that cannot be said with words.”
Week 19 – Between Two Worlds
“My goal in sharing my work is to help others who are going through their own darkness to feel less alone.”
Week 20 – Mortal Coil
Follow Sarah on her blog or Facebook to see each week’s self-portrait and for prints of her photographs visit her Etsy shop.
Week 21 – Isolation
