Ecstasy, Passion and Pain: A Photographer Works Through a Rough Patch in Her Relationship

For Heartcore, photographer Nadja Wohlleben works through painful moments in her relationship by capturing herself and her lover during moments of acute passion and anguish. For the artist, this visual diary served as an outlet during a particularly fraught time in her partnership, a period punctuated by episodes of loneliness, fear, and yearning.

Most of Wohlleben’s scenes play out in the couple’s rented apartment in Dubai, with a few expeditions to the pool and to the desert. She explains that some were repeated stagings of past events, and others were shot in the midst of real-life situations. Liberated from the confines of a strict linear time frame, many toe the line between conscious reenactments and real-time happenings. In this isolated chasm of emotion, the lovers are stretched and distorted by the camera, as if they are perpetually on the brink of blurring into nothingness.

Ultimately, Heartcore is both a violent excavation of shared memories and a balm applied to the most burning emotional wounds. Its visual narrative gives meaning to what has been endured while paving the way for the unknowable things to come. Wohlleben says, “We are now in a better place than ever before […] The power of photography should not be underestimated.”

All images © Nadja Wohlleben

via Burn Magazine

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