{"id":10474,"date":"2025-03-29T12:26:52","date_gmt":"2025-03-29T17:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/faithhopeandfiction.com\/content\/?p=10474"},"modified":"2025-03-29T12:26:53","modified_gmt":"2025-03-29T17:26:53","slug":"there-is-always-light-in-the-forest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/faithhopeandfiction.com\/content\/there-is-always-light-in-the-forest\/","title":{"rendered":"There Is Always Light in the Forest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Exploring Grief through Photography<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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By Liz Jakimow<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
The phone call turned my life upside down. It was August 2024, and the call came from my boyfriend\u2019s number, but it wasn\u2019t my boyfriend on the phone. It was his son, telling me that Greg had died of a heart attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had felt grief before (for my grandmother, my father and my children\u2019s grandfather), but this felt like an entirely new type of grief. Constantly in tears, I found it difficult to do or think about anything except think about Greg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To help me in the grieving process, I decided to take just one photo a day. It didn\u2019t matter what it was. It didn\u2019t even have to look good. It just had to be a photo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In setting myself this task, I gave me something to do that seemed achievable. It enabled me to focus on something else for a brief period every day. It also motivated me to spend time looking at nature and benefit from the healing it offered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I first started taking these photos, there was no thought behind them. One of my first photos during this time of mourning was a dry patch of grass. But as I continued, I discovered that my way of looking at the world had changed. I was attracted to shadows and cycles of life and death within nature. Each of my photos spoke about my grief in some way. Some were reminders that death is a part of life. Others offered a sign of hope, that even amid the gloom, buds will still appear in spring; there is always light in the darkest forest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first photo I took where I realised I was trying, in my own way, to \u201cphotograph grief\u201d was a shot I took by Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra, Australia, not far from where I work. Two swans were on the lake, and I had my camera out and was photographing them. As I saw the way that they ducked in and out of the water, I wanted to capture the moment where one swan was one top of the water and one was below. This to me symbolised my boyfriend still being next to me, even if he was on a different plane and could no longer be seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was then that I had the idea of curating these photos and creating an exhibition. The exhibition titled \u201cA journey with grief: exploring loss through photography and poetry\u201d included photos and poetry from my initial three-month grieving period. I also self-published a book, containing more of my photos and poems also from that period. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
About two months after Greg\u2019s death, I visited Floriade, a flower festival held in Canberra, for a friend\u2019s birthday. While others were snapping pictures of the perfect floral displays, I was taking photos of the flowers that were dead or damaged. One photo from this day is titled \u201cHeart Wide Open\u201d: a flower with half its petals down, showing the stamen inside. This photo spoke to me about my boyfriend\u2019s heart attack and how my own heart seemed to have been ripped wide open. But it also spoke to me about the fragility of life; flowers, like people, die, but that is all part of the cyclical nature of life.<\/p>\n\n\n
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Sometimes the poems and the photos went together. One photo from the exhibition, \u201cThe Empty Chair,\u201d was taken by Araluen Creek, which is about a five-minute walk from my house. When I saw the chair that had been left by the riverbank, it seemed so poignant and sad. After taking that photo, I converted it to black and white and edited it to increase the shadows and darkness, giving it a very moody feel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The photo inspired me to write the poem \u201cEmpty Chairs\u201d to capture the way I felt when looking at chairs that my boyfriend used to sit in. Although they were empty, they were still filled with his presence.<\/p>\n\n\n
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The chair is empty And yet filled with your presence More than when you were alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For every time I see it I think of you sitting there, The way you smiled, The words you spoke, You leaning towards me, Your hand resting on my arm, The joy upon your face That I knew was because of me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was only a moment, And yet it lives forever, Permanently sitting there, In the chair that is now empty. – Liz Jakimow<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Driving down to the coast one day, I noticed how quickly we passed by the trees on the side of the road. It reminded me of how brief a period I was with my boyfriend. I wanted to capture this sense of time moving too quickly. Sitting in the passenger seat, I put my camera on a slow shutter speed, to blur the photo and symbolize fleeting time.<\/p>\n\n\n
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While many of my photos speak to life and death, there are always signs of hope. Greg\u2019s death in August was soon followed by the Australian Spring in September. Even though I was still grieving, everywhere I looked I was enveloped in signs of new life. At first, seeing them depressed me and made me almost angry. How could there be new life when Greg was dead? Yet after a while, I saw them as signs of hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even though nature dies, it is reborn in a new season. The cycle of life and death continues in nature, and for humans too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
![\"Swan\"](\"https:\/\/faithhopeandfiction.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/Swan-min.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"Tulips\"](\"https:\/\/faithhopeandfiction.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/Tulips-min.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"Empty](\"https:\/\/faithhopeandfiction.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/EmptyChair-min.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"Blurred](\"https:\/\/faithhopeandfiction.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/BlurredForest-min.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n![\"budding](\"https:\/\/faithhopeandfiction.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/BuddingTree-min.png\")
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