LOOKING AT LOVE

In this day and age where love has grown and transformed into many spheres, we celebrate LOVE.
The one ever constant verb we do anything to keep.
Today i present my favorite LOVE quotes a series is pictures "LOOKING AT LOVE" (... re-blogged from  Newyorker)

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close. 

Pablo Neruda

Molly Landreth, “Meg and Renee, Seattle, WA” (2007)

This image is from my series “Embodiment: A Portrait of Queer Life in America,” which I photographed primarily between 2004 and 2010. Each image in this body of work is like a love letter to and about my subjects, as well as the larger queer community that we work together to represent. I think that the caption, written by the friends in this image, proves that it is possible to photograph love, in it’s many complex and subtle forms. “Looking back at this photograph, I feel a sense of calm happiness remembering a night driving around aimlessly in the world we’d created for ourselves, far from home, in the quiet darkness of a lakeside parking lot sitting next to someone you love and have grown up with, chilly and nestled together with our eyes shut, trying to stay still while flashes burst all around. While living in the Midwest, we were often the only community we had. Now, grown up, we continue to be close friends and to learn from each other. At the time this was taken, it just seemed like a fun weeknight project, now in a frame on a wall it reminds us both of that moment in time and how amazing it is to know someone whose shoulder you can rest your life upon.”

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky. 

Rainer Maria Rilke

Ute Klein, from the series “Resonanzgeflechte—leibhafter Raum” (2009)

Ten years ago, I fell in love with my partner. But, soon after we started our relationship, our lives pulled us in different directions, and we ended up in a long-distance relationship. It was heartbreaking to be in love but be apart, and it made me question the general idea of relationship. Why do people decide to be together? What does it mean when they are actually apart? What do we expect from our relationships? What roles do they play in our lives? With this in mind, I started exploring the very general aspects of love and partnership. I wanted to depict relationships in their complex and multilayered facets, transforming them into sculptural-looking figures, in strange and ambiguous poses, with colorful surfaces. I do believe that it’s possible to find ways to photograph love, as I believe that a relationship can survive hard times. Sometimes, it just needs to be looked at differently to be better understood.

And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.  

Paul McCartney

Lauren Fleishman, “Yevgeniy and Lyubov Kissin, Brooklyn, New York” (2009)

This is an image from my series “Love Ever After,” which documents the love stories of couples that have been together more than five decades. I met the Kissins at a dance for seniors, and I immediately noticed Lyubov’s beautiful hair. Each time I tried to photograph another couple, she would pull me away, bringing the camera back to herself. She loved being photographed. Do I think it is possible to photograph love? Absolutely, I’m a romantic!

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.  

James Baldwin

Sage Sohier, “Stephanie and Monica, Boston, MA” (1987)

This picture is from my series “At Home with Themselves: Same-Sex Couples in 1980’s America.” From 1986 to 1988, I photographed over a hundred gay and lesbian couples and conducted extensive interviews with them. I feel privileged to have been let in on this private, intimate moment. I don’t feel like a voyeur but, rather, like I’m being included in this special realm. It’s moving, and it makes me reflect on my own experience of intimacy. “Love” is a tough one to photograph. I certainly think it’s possible to photograph intimacy, and to make pictures that give a visceral and tender sense of touch.

We must get beyond passions, like a great work of art. In such miraculous harmony. We should learn to love each other so much to live outside of time… detached.
Federico Fellini

Sabine Mirlesse, “L & V” (2012) from the series “Preventricular Arrythmia”

I started this series after a breakup, in 2010. At the time, I was so overwhelmed with the subject of happy and unhappy couples, and what that meant, that I decided to just give in to it. I began shooting in New York, and then Paris, often using the too-small apartments young couples find themselves sharing as a player in the scenario. The series developed from there, and it took the title of the diagnosis a cardiologist gave me for a heart condition, very common among young women in their twenties, in which you have extra heartbeats. As for what I’ve learned: in retrospect, whether or not a couple is still together perhaps matters less than the fact that at the time the picture was taken, there was love in the room.

HAPPY LOVERS  DAY!!