Gomma Photography Grant 2024
Tell My Love Now
Photographer
Sara Aue Sobol
Tell My Love Now
24 Jan, 2025
"Sara Aue Sobol’s tell my love now weaves together two intertwined journeys, separated by time and place, but which unfolded simultaneously within her. As Sobol grappled with her husband Jacob’s clinical depression, she came to see the photographs she had taken in Russia years earlier - during a period when people there seemed freer - as a lens through which she could process both personal and societal turmoil. Through a combination of text and images, portraits and everyday stories, the project explores both outer and inner landscapes, drawing us closer to one another and to ourselves."
About the photographer
Sara Aue Sobol
When I was a teenager, I started taking pictures of my everyday life in Verona. I felt what photography means to me - both as a viewer and as the one being looked at. The image became a way for me to express my feelings in a strongly conservative society, where I grew up alone with a mentally ill mother. At the age of 20, I moved to Copenhagen to study at Fatamorgana - the Danish School of Documentary and Art Photography - where I was inspired to change focus from the physical self-portrait to expressing my feelings in interaction with the people I photographed. I mirrored myself in others, and I tried to give their lives a place in my world. Photography became my language and my special connection to my surroundings and the people I photographed. Since my trip, Russia has invaded Ukraine. I have become a mother. The two events are in stark contrast to each other; one represents death and destruction, while the other deals with love and life. I see that the love I feel for my family is also present in the pictures of my fellow Russians. The more cruel the world seem, the greater our need to encounter and reencounter the presence and passion for life that my images aspire to capture
