Shira Gold is a Vancouver based fine art photographer creating emotive, intimate environmental portrait imagery on delicate but powerfully human subjects of grief, identity and life transitions. Photographic Art Photography Grief Landscape Healing Contemporary Canadian Photographer

Contact Good Grief/Numbness Good Grief/Vulnerability Good Grief/Isolation Good Grief/Fight of Flight Good Grief/Resurfacing Good Grief/On a Wing Good Grief/Silence of Noise The Fine Art of Letting Go/Statement The Fine Art of Letting Go/Photographs Press + Published The Fine Art of Letting Go/In Place Instagram Good Grief/Shock Bare Essentials/Photographs Bare Essentials/Statement Bare Essentials/In Place Capsule Collection Good Grief/Statement Additional Series/Sea Swept Additional Series/Holy Smoke Additional Series/Snow Play Additional Series/Personal Projects About/Biography About/Statement About/CV About/Newsletter About/Events If Memory Was a Layer/Photographs If Memory Was a Layer By a Thread/Photographs By a Thread/Statement By a Thread/In Place

Resurfacing

Loss of life is absolute, but accepting these facts can feel impossible. I found it exceptionally difficult to surrender to the reality that the person who gave be life was now a part of my memory. Letting go came with an incredible sense of guilt, feeling as though I was abandoning the person I’d lost, even while I felt lost and abandoned myself. Acceptance and surrender allowed me to begin to slowly let go of the profound injury I carried with me for such a long time—feelings I held onto in order to remain connected to the past.

With Resurfacing, I document the emancipatory transition from mourning to healing. Unlike the black birds of my previous series, the white birds of Resurfacing signal the release of past burdens. Each image depicts the emotional shift from darkness to light, highlighting the a newfound sense of life and levity.. The cracks of light that emerge after great mourning are depicted through muted hues. Sturdy rocks suggest the foundation of strength required for taking off into the world again, lifting into the air with all the promise of hope. The discovery of my own resilience during trauma was profoundly beautiful, and so human. To resurface after grief is to witness life in one of its most poetic states. My message in this series is that grief need not define us. It can simply reshape how we see and engage in the world.

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