SIX STAGES OF GRIEF
500 words re concept and methodology to accompany six black and white prints
© David Lowe, April 1994
The title of my photographic series is SIX STAGES OF GRIEF. Each of the photographs deals with a particular stage of the grieving cycle: denial, guilt, limbo, anger, depression and hope. I chose to explore these sub-emotions of grief after studying the grief cycle model of an organisation called Hope For Bereaved. As this model lists more than thirty separate stages, it was a matter of deciding which emotions could be expressed in visual terms, strongly and simply, without resort to cliche.
Having chosen the emotions to be illustrated, I began scripting possible visual approaches, eventually hitting upon the idea of using expressive hands, photographed against black. The final, hopeful image would contrast with the other five photographs, which were to be dark and moody. In an effort to maximise viewer impact (and set myself a challenge), I decided to 'frame' each interior photograph with a separate, textural, exterior image. These would be chosen with a view to supporting and commenting upon the interior images.
The decision to appear in front of the camera myself sprang from a desire to control every aspect of the image-making process. I knew I needed very specific acting, particularly for the hand modelling, and didn't have enough film to waste a lot of time explaining to someone else what I needed. At the shooting stage, it was a matter of setting up lighting, lens selection, focus, aperture and camera position using a stand-in. After locking the camera off on a tripod, I would then take up my position on the drop cloth and ask my partner Jane to press the shutter. In most cases the figure was lit with three small standing lamps and a single bounce flash off the roof or wall. In the case of hope, I was able to photograph my own left hand while I held the camera with my right. The double exposure for guilt was not created in-camera, but carefully arranged as if it had been, and then matched in the darkroom.
The outer images were much harder to shoot than they had been to script. Perhaps the most difficult one to get was the frame for anger, which called for a crashing wave, or a wall of water. It took me a roll and a half of film to snap the image I wanted at North Narrabeen Head. Although I was using a 200mm lens, it was still necessary to get quite close to the action. I had originally intended to use a plug-hole for the whirlpool effect in depression. This didn't work at all, and I experimented with blenders, sinks and paddles in the bath before hitting upon the simple device of swirling water in a bucket and photographing the result with a macro lens.
Although some of the prints come close to being too dark (and breaking the high key/low key rule), the subject was grief, and I felt that going any lighter, particularly in the case of 'depression', would be a mistake. For limbo, I wanted an effect of void, and lit for a single highlight on the fingernail, leading the viewer's eye on to the mysterious, almost black face (photographed through a blue veil).
The framing effect was achieved with two custom-designed burning and dodg-ing tools which I made from cardboard. One was a simple rectangular window designed to be held halfway between the lens of the enlarger and the paper. The other consisted of a matching rectangle of cardboard, suspended from the corners by thread to an outer frame. From there it was a simple matter of using two enlargers, and experimenting with exposures and window placement until the desired match or overlap effect was achieved.
© David Lowe, April 1994