taking a picture of a breaking heart
July 2019
Always, always, there is someone walking away. Choose carefully whether or not they are in the frame; best case scenario, there are two shattered souls, each fighting to be more torn apart than the other — worst case and there is a single, shaking fragment, waiting for its counterpart to turn back and apologise. To speak. To even acknowledge them, one last time. Out of respect, you do not photograph this. Out of respect, you try and tear your eyes away as a pair of knees collapse into the floor — we are picturing broken hearts, not lost lives. Not as far as we can help it, anyway.
Capture the signs, too — hands shaking, heads bowing, tears falling. There are more, of course; you will know them when you see them, and they will hurt you. But your pain is nothing in tragic comparison. Keep the camera still. Your job is not to suffer. In some instances, you must wait. The darkness will come with its slinking tendrils, twisting its way around your subject’s body until there is suddenly no difference between human limbs and haunting tenebrosity — darkness does that, every time. It becomes them. It sucks the life from your photo and by the time you have rushed to take it, nothing remains but for the empty scar that marks the end of an existence.
A warning: do not become attached. In some cases, you may believe there to have been an opportunity missed: no shattered heart here. Nothing but a mess of bones and tears and sinew — the cameras do not favour that. Remain in place, though, no matter the evidence. Do not move from their side. For some, it takes hours. Others, days. Weeks. Months. In occasional instances, years, but watch out for those. These cases are dangerous and hot to touch. Just wait, please. The realisation will hit. It will steal the breath from their lungs and shatter the bones in their weakened frames. Crucially, to them, something is missing. At some point, they understand this. Always, always, it is the person walking away. Now, and quickly, you take the photo. It kills them every time.
