Dear Readers, this one was scheduled to be published next week. But this week I have stumbled upon several articles about the crossroads of art with loss and grief and I felt that Photos in a Minor Key needed to go out early this month.
I started this series in order to blatantly expose the unresolved discomfort with melancholy that can drift in sometimes. I wanted to give the discomfort some photographic frames and a minor key to play in.
I live in a country that for too long has shunned anything somber as if it were a disease. We treat grief, especially, like an enemy to conquer instead of a companion to allow and learn from. And in our effort to escape or hide the challenge loss, we often create more painful wounds.
Eight years of back-to-back loss have definitely changed the way I move through the world. I wouldn't have chosen it, and I wouldn't recommend it, but I can't deny what it has taught me. I knew it changed me when one day grief stopped feeling like something to overcome and became something to walk alongside with. It has directly altered not just how I live, who is now in my life and… how I create.
I know now that the photographs which stay with me rarely come from happiness alone. They seem to emerge after something has been realized, endured, and slowly transformed into a different kind of observation.
Perhaps that's why music has become such a natural companion to this series. It offers an emotional language that photography can't always translate. Some keys carry a weight that doesn’t need lyrics at all.
So, without further ado, here’s this month’s Photos in a Minor Key.
Some photographs feel like minor key chords to me — tender, nostalgic, sometimes dramatic, always a little unresolved. This periodic series presents the photographic frames that like notes in a minor key, don’t quite belong anywhere else. Call them the B-sides that linger— accompanied by the feelings that the songs evoke.
This month’s installment is in the key, E flat minor and is considered the darkest, most somber key of all. In fact, it is rarely used. The key uses note-combinations that typically create: tension- like the music feels it’s not fully at rest. The notes are also “lower” in pitch, which your brain often associates with seriousness and mourning.
Dido’s 2009 song, The Day Before The Day, in E flat minor, is not just a song. It’s accompanied by a beautiful, short film representation which at first seems unfitting, but when watched, leaves an understanding of how regardless of the people, the process of loss is still the same— permanently altering.
The video was shot in Nazaré in a fishing village where the people show real struggle and the beauty of the sea is impactful. Dido says she shot this music video there because she wanted to “capture a genuine feel of tradition since most of the people there are fishermen and have been fishermen for many generations.”
I have yet to visit Portugal, but for years, Nazaré has been top 3 on my list. It feels like heaven to me.
Normally, I invite you to let the music accompany the photographs. This time, I'd love for you to watch the film separately. It deserves your full attention apart from my photos.
I’ll see you sporadically through August in between travels. Be well everyone!
Dear reader, I write these words myself. AI is a tool in my life, not my voice. Always free, no paywalls. If something stays with you, share it. That means everything. Thank you!
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