Grief Landscapes

I’m a photographer and multidisciplinary artist whose work centers around the idea that sharing stories and making art about potentially isolating experiences can help make those experiences less lonely. I map experiences that many of us share, but don’t always talk about.

I’m currently working on an evolving art project about bereavement called Grief Landscapes, in which I’m documenting the wide variety of ways that people respond to loss. First, I’m inviting people to answer a series of questions about how they grieved after someone’s death. I'm then photographing, in extreme close-up, something that evokes the memory of the person who died, transforming it into an abstract landscape inspired by the person’s grief story.

Grief is often described as a journey, but it’s an intensely individual and often isolating one: rarely do people speak openly about the range of ways of grieving, and there seem to be many misconceptions about the grief process. I’m using the project to examine a number of questions about grief and bereavement: What does it look like? How do people navigate it differently? How does grief change us? Grief Landscapes documents grief not as a prescribed set of steps or timelines but as a place where there are no right answers, just an exploration of new territory.

You can live anywhere in the world to participate in Grief Landscapes, and I’m looking for contributors of all ages and backgrounds, with different relationships to the deceased, and different lengths of time since the loss. To view the project so far and submit your story, go to grieflandscapes.com.

Grief Landscapes is supported by a grant from the Ontario Arts Council.

Mindy Stricke is a multidisciplinary artist creating photographs, interactive installations, conversations and collaborations. Her work has been awarded grants from the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts, exhibited throughout North America, and has appeared in international publications including The New York Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, and the Smithsonian Institute Photography Initiative’s book and online exhibit, Click! Photography Changes Everything. Originally from New York, she now lives in Toronto with her husband and two children.