The Tiger

The Tiger is a visual and written representation of my personal experience of grief. It is a story about me, about my loss, my pain and my darkest, life-changing moments.

When I lost my child, Leo to cancer, I fell into months of deep mourning accompanied by an overwhelming silence. The only way I was able to communicate my feelings was through writing fantasy stories about the world Leo and I created together. A vivid, magical land filled with talking animals, friendly monsters, and mysterious creatures, resembled my life, and yet, seemed less tragic because of its fairy-tale nature. As I kept writing stories, I noticed they follow a certain plot. In attempt to bring them to life and save what Leo and I had together, I decided to illustrate them with photographs. Working in self-portraiture was a natural consequence of creating this deeply personal project.

Inspired by alluring horror aesthetic of Cristina Otero; bold, emotional images by Paolo Roversi; gothic and dark photographs focused on meanders of psychological explorations by Danny Bittencourt, and unsettling mystery of light and darkness in chiaroscuro paintings, I wanted to create a gothic inspired fairy tale of horror and beauty, an intimate portrait of a grieving mother, her depression and helplessness.

My photographs aim to capture emotions that form, what at first glimpse looks like a fairy tale, but what they really show is unimaginable pain, death of a loved one leaves behind. In the center of my project is Max, an orange monster who through interactions with various characters, leads audience through my story of grief; its violence, chaos, its tenderness, its silence and its scream.