How does one experience loss? What does loss look like?
Catastrophic losses usually have a face; think war photos, photos from the World Trade Center, crashes of various sorts but I am interested in personal loss.
I have always been interested in alternate states of reality, the meaning of dreams, what becomes of our spirits after death (and before birth). We all deal with “loss” in some form, loss of friends, home, youth, and the ultimate loss, loss of life. Death transforms us; reality shifts, but to what?
I am intrigued with how a person adapts to losses in their lives; how they are absorbed by events and changed; how they experience loss. Do dreams influence the experience of loss? Are dreams real? I set about to address these issues through a photographic photosynthesis in this body of work; choosing photography as the medium to help me reveal reality while at the same time transform that reality to reflect loss.
In these images, I have placed a model in various environments where a loss of some sort has recently occurred. Some of the losses were very specific and personal and some were of a general, universal nature reflected in an inner state of anguish and eventual acceptance.
Ellen Jantzen
Ellen Jantzen was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. Organic gardens and goat husbandry took center stage in Ellen’s life but a desire for a more “artistic” life led the couple to Los Angeles California.
