Artist Ellen Friedlander is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the project ‘Betrayal: Shattered in a Moment’. To see Ellen ’s body of work, click on any image.
A child was conceived, and everything changed. I learned that my husband of 25 years had fathered a child with another woman. And yet, my love for this man had not waned nor had his love for me, but he had lost his way. I grieved deeply, counseled my children on their grief and confusion, and through thousands of conversations have grown to understand this man. The destructive has now become constructive. The growth from our challenges allows us to forge a path of recovery. We now share a new love for each other as we co-parent together, but separate.
With my project “Betrayal Shattered in a Moment,” I faced the camera in times of paralyzed sadness as a way to process very complex emotions and to free the shock, loss and anger I was experiencing. By deliberately cutting emotionally fueled self-portraits into vertical uneven strips and reassembling them, I created the physical manifestation of letting go of a story that no longer served me. As a new self was re-contextualized and reconsidered, I felt renewed and invigorated, able to let myself shed the past and be free to find happiness. This profoundly therapeutic series is part of a larger body of work created over the last 5 years.
All images and text © Ellen Friedlander
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By Ellen Friedlander
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As a survivor still healing, the images match the pieces I wrote that can never publish because I fear unexpected consequences in another country, far away, and God will hold me accountable. I don’t know why we are driven to find expression for our grief and sorrow, our shock and horror, but it’s like a box with a pet inside. The pet wants out. So we let it out, then we feed eat and grow it and… I don’t know if we should. Worse things keep happening and I wonder if it is our doing. What we resist will persist someone wrote.
The photographs breathtakingly shows paralyzing sadness. The play of light, shadow, and lines work together to describe your raw experience.
Well done, channeling experience into art so powerfully and coherently!