Addressing Loss: A Collaborative Project
This project was recently mentioned in Sirin Kale’s moving piece, Memory Lanes: Google’s Map of Our Lives (published October 30, 2021 in The Guardian’s Observer Magazine.) Definitely check out the full article!
As a documentary photographer, I’m fascinated by the attachment humans form to place and environment or a moment in time. I began photography as a form of therapy and can personally attest that the role photography plays related to health is profound. In June 2021, I came across a story someone shared about googling an address which resulted in an image of a loved one they mourn, an image captured and frozen in time of their loved one still alive and well somehow via a Google Street View image.
After a crushing year filled with grief and loss for so many globally, the idea moved me profoundly and has inspired this collaborative project to invite anyone globally who might like to share images and stories of loved ones they’ve lost whom they miss or who’ve found comfort revisiting and remembering them via Google Street View captures from a time when they were still alive. The loved ones can be human or animal.
Or maybe there’s an old car you once owned sitting in the driveway? Graffiti you made? Perhaps a spot you honeymooned? A pub where you celebrated someone you miss or an event you return to in memory? Has a former dwelling you loved been turned into something else now? Is the image you find via typing an address into Google Maps where you met your First Love, or a moment you are missing of “The One That Got Away”? Is the place you google somewhere you meant to travel with someone (or alone) that remains a chance missed? Is it somewhere you once lived with someone, a place you lost someone or something important to you? Is it a place of lost childhood? Is it part of yourself you may have lost (or are perhaps even relieved you’ve lost)?
The part photographs play related to healing and memory compels me to begin this project. I’d love to learn why you search a certain address and the story behind that. Have you searched an address via Google Street View where a captured/historical image has comforted you? Has it cushioned grief? Have you found catharsis? As a global collaborative project, I invite you over the next year to e-mail your image and the story behind it (up to 200 words) to me and I’ll share it on this Instagram profile where you can be credited (or tagged or share anonymously if you prefer) so others might also be inspired to find the light of someone or something they’ve lost still shining, not just in their memory but in a window somewhere out there suspended in time and in the ether.