Week 7 BOC: Collage

When we take photos, we can never know what impact those photos will have. What emotions those photos will invoke. The best I could hope for would be to capture a once-in-a-lifetime moment, to be treasured for years to come. Photos that could be passed down from generation to generation. To be picked up decades down the road and looked at with fond memories of happy times. But sometimes, the opposite can happen. 

A few weeks ago, this family did a photo session with me to celebrate the announcement of their second child. She was ten weeks pregnant and nearly ready to share their excitement with friends and family. She ordered prints and started making announcement cards. Unfortunately, they lost the baby. So now these photos, that were supposed to represent happiness, changed to sorrow within such a short amount of time. 

So what does this mean for the photographs? Should we delete them from my hard drive? Burn all the prints? Or should she keep them as a reminder of grief? Instead, they took the small prints and attached them to blue balloons. They invited their friends to join them as they released the balloons and share in their experience.

   
  Even though I would never want my photos to make anyone sad, I'm proud that they mean something. They can mean grief and sorrow, or hope and appreciation for what we have.