I took this picture the following Saturday, wandering by myself along a frozen shore: everything was new and exciting, and I finally had so much time for myself, a time I had striven for for a long year. I need time by myself like I need to breathe. I remember the silence, the unfamiliar light, the wind blowing.
I had an Olympus Trip with me (my boyfriend had insisted on my carrying it with me), loaded with an old and probably expired film. I was just beginning to learn to loosen up, to stop being so concentrated on projects and just allow myself to shoot freely, to keep a visual diary.
Then "Hold" came along: a personal project on loss, grief, life-changing events. While editing, I laid around 100 pictures first on my bedroom's floor, then on the classroom's desks. Looking at the pictures, I realised there were so many landscapes (something I was not familiar with) mirroring my feelings. My teacher Soren Patger was a huge help with the edit, and suggested that at a certain point of my booklet I would need an image to talk about rupture, a sadness coming to envolve what once was. And there came the picture.
So, while writing this, I am realizing that maybe the picture is not as casual as I first stated: by going to Denmark and merging with whatever was expecting me, I had actually given the start to a process of reconnection with my feelings (however cheesy this may sound), and such an image could only come at that moment: not earlier, not later.
- Arianna Sanesi