Darling is a retelling of the relationship Oliver Grabowski shares with his partner; one of the smaller scales of a universal story of human hope.
“It is within this bleak natural context that beauty is encountered, and the encounter is by its nature sudden and unpredicatable. The gale blows itself out, the sea changes from the colour of grey shit to aquamarine. Under the fallen boulder of an avalanche a flower grows. Over the shanty town the moon rises. I offer dramatic examples so as to insist upon the bleakness of the context. Reflect upon more everyday examples. However it is encountered, beauty is always an exception, always in despite of. This is why it moves us.”
– John Berger, The White Bird
The concept that beauty exits as a respite to an otherwise difficult and cruel world is an integral part of my work as a storyteller. John Berger’s theory that beauty is the unpredictable exception in our encounters with nature and each other reflects my artistic approach, constructing narratives of intimacy and hope despite personal and global crises.
To me, hope is a gentle and necessary beauty, a vital sensory respite that I want to replicate through photography. This often subtly visible glimmer of human resilience is what contextualises identity; the spaces we inhabit together, and the world we build both on a small and larger societal level.
Darling is a retelling of the relationship I share with my partner; one of the smaller scales of a universal story of human hope. It is also a deeply intimate response to the world around me, and the space I occupy within it. Through constructed and fictional representations of reality, Darling explores acts of devotion and tenderness against the experience of the everyday, and the tenuous complexities that form the foundation of real intimacy.
As an intrinsically collaborative work, the project is driven from lived experience. Darling uses photography to materialise the mutual adoration we share, as completely different individuals, serving as a testament to devotion, change, intimacy, and love.
Oliver Grabowski is a British photographer who specialises in portraiture, capturing genuine expression and meaning in human emotion drives his artistic practice. As a photographer and artist he is deeply interested in the aesthetics of hope.
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