SPACE B
EVERLASTING LOVE
LIA STEELE
Everlasting love is a new series of portrait, still life and landscape photographs that is dedicated to the fleeting moments of youthful beauty, indeterminate bright futures and romantic expectations.
In one photograph we see a portrait of a young man of nineteen. He stands shirtless in a dusk lit suburban backyard and stares into the lens, the directness of his gaze showing self assurance commanding the viewer to return his gaze. The subject’s self-assurance can be viewed as a response to the vulnerability caused by being unclothed. We are left with an unsettling image that does not define beauty but rather questions it.
In the still life photographs surrounding the youthful subjects there is a photograph taken in a small room that captures sunlight seeping through an intricately detailed lace curtain, with lightness, shadow and eventually darkness exposed in the image. To the other side there is a natural lit still life of wildflowers in a vase. The wildflowers are all in various stages of blooming and wilting and although the bottom of their stems are placed together in the vase, each flower reaches out in a different direction as if they are all searching for the sun they rely on to grow and to live. Some are yet to bloom while others are drying out and their stems are limp and lifeless.
In another portrait there is a young man posed on a white bed, laying languidly with his head lent against the palm of one hand while he, with eyes closed, soaks up the sun coming in from the window. The soft white light highlights the beauty of the young man and puts a gentle contrast on the detailed creases of the bed. He is portrayed as the beautiful boy, the centre of the universe. The photograph gives the subject the gift of eternal youth and beauty.
The sequence of ephemeral photographs shows life and death, lightness and darkness, and beauty and the sublime, giving the viewer a bittersweet picture of the fragility of life and inevitable death.
