Visual Artist Kristina Borinskaya is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the project ‘Love and Anguish’. To see Kristina’s body of work, click on any image.

Love and Anguish is a personal exploration into the issues of love, desire, trauma and power struggles. My parents divorced in 2003 when I was eleven years old since then I’ve never heard from my father again. In 2018 I started photographing myself and my partner Alex with the attempt, on one hand, to encapsulate all the contradictions of a heterosexual relationship and, on the other, to analyze how my childhood trauma, the absence of a paternal figure, influenced my choice of life partner.

Love and Anguish investigates how a personality construct and the dynamics within a relationship are shaped by past experiences. Taking into account the contradictions between generations, cultures and ideologies, a ‘male – female’ relationship becomes an example of a broad human condition.

The project challenges to embody emotional equality and reinforce the vulnerability of the human form: instead of following the traditional construct of representation where ‘male’ and ‘female’ are usually conceived as opposites, the intention is to combine and subvert the hallmarks of refined femininity and masculinity. In this respect the work seeks to arouse viewers discomfort, compassion and their own lived experience, revealing, through unmediated honesty, anxieties, desires, fears but also joys and pleasures inherent to all human beings.

Albeit a personal study, Love and Anguish re-examines prevalent questions on human relationships in a world spinning out of balance. What keeps two people together, and what drives them away? What does it really mean to love someone? Can desire exist without objectification? What is the gaze we have for nakedness? With an attempt to answer on these questions the work transcends the personal into the universal.