The Loved&Lost Volume 1 book will feature 5 stories from the project, each a personal account of loss, as I invite participants to return to the location of an original photograph to re-stage it and record an interview. It’s a chance for them to think back to the day the image was made, to celebrate those no longer with us and to talk about their experience of grief.
Design
The book is being designed by a good friend of mine, Craig Oldham. Craig is one of the most highly regarded designers in the country and I can’t wait for you to see how Craig presents these heartfelt stories on the page.
In its physical form, the book will be A5 in size and have just over 100 pages. Each story will include the original and restaged photographs, a series of other images captured on the day, as well as the full interview transcriptions, the story in their own words.
I want to make a book that is accessible, approachable and also shareable. A collection of personal stories that hopefully you will find solace in, but also something that you can offer to others in their time of need, when it’s hurting most.
Why did I started the Loved&Lost project?
It’s coming up to 10 years since my dad passed away. It was deeply painful and as I navigated the emotional journey of grief, I wanted to find ways to understand what I was feeling. One of the most helpful things, was talking to others who had lost someone, it made me feel like I wasn’t the only one. I realised though, that aside from celebrities, there aren’t many stories of loss out there, so as a photographer, I wanted to find a way to encourage others to share their story. My mum had this photograph of her with dad, stood at the top of the hill overlooking the town where they lived. I asked her if we could go and re-stage it.
“An image I use is expanding your world. Your loss doesn’t diminish, you just put it into a bigger space, and then it’s not so overwhelming.” – Anne
Seeing those two images side-by-side, really demonstrated the space that my dad had left, the physical loss that we were all feeling. I asked mum a few questions about the original photograph. She told me about how it was taken a few days after they got engaged, about how they met through a mutual friend and that dad had to ask her to marry her 3 times before she said yes. She told me about what he meant to her, and about how painful it was that he was gone. I shared the story online.
There are now over 20 stories on the Loved&Lost website, the project has been shared with millions of people worldwide, been featured on BBC Breakfast TV, in The Guardian and now, for the very first time, in print.
“I think you’re sort of clinging to a hope that it isn’t real, because you can’t take it in and can’t believe it” – Darren
Last year, my younger sister passed away after a short illness with brain cancer, quickly followed by the loss of both of my grandmas. Loss seems to have marked the last 10 years of my life, but through the Loved&Lost project, I have come to understand so much more of what it can mean to lose somebody close to you through the generosity of time and openness of the project participants. I will be forever grateful to them all for enabling me to understand more about my grief and for their encouragement in continuing the project.
Why now?
Loved&Lost is being exhibited at Weston Park Museum, Sheffield this winter. I wanted to mark the significance of this and celebrate the project by creating the book.
If you’d like to support the project, to allow these stories to reach the hands of those who need to hear them, then please consider pledging. Perhaps get a book for yourself. Maybe get two, one for you and one for someone else, just to let someone know that you’re thinking of them or maybe as a gift for Christmas, a time that can be particularly difficult as we think of family and friends who are no longer with us.
Please share the Kickstarter link on social media or with anyone you think might be interested, people who are grieving, artists or academics exploring the topic of loss or those who work for bereavement charities.
Unfortunately, loss is something that we are all likely to experience, and for that reason, it’s important that we’re open to understanding more about the experience of others and appreciating how best we can look after each other. I hope that the book will go some way in enabling that.
Thank you for your support and enabling the book to become a reality.
“I do think that having experienced such pain and loss has helped me to have a much deeper appreciation of beauty. It feels like once you’ve been to a place of such pain, you have a deeper understanding of the world around you and I just, well, I look on life differently.” – Nicola
Huge thanks to:
Sam Roberts – Video Production & Script Editing.
Craig Oldham – Book Design
All images © Loved&Lost Project
The book content is being gathered together, ready to deliver to the designer Craig Oldham. The book will ready to print as soon as the funds have been raised, so as long as the total is reached, copies of the book will be delivered by Christmas.
If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.