100 Love Stories
This project was born from a desire to reconnect with people after the pandemic.
The portraits were taken over 100 consecutive days. This is a selection of the portraits and stories, but all 100 can be viewed here.
“My love story is about my father, who I called Pai. Pai is Dad in Portuguese. There were a couple of special things about us: the first being that Pai was born the day before me, so he was born on July 5th and I was born on July 6th, and since I was about 5 years old our ages added up to the same number so it felt like there was something quite magical about our birth dates and our ages. We also both have birth marks right next to each other on our tummies in the same place too.
Pai passed away just under a year ago, 14 days after his birthday and 13 days after mine. We don’t choose the family we’re born into, but I definitely think of my father as my soulmate. I received so much unconditional love from him growing up. My mother was the main breadwinner and was out of the house and travelling a lot, so Pai was considered my
primary caretaker. He would wake me up in the morning, make me breakfast and pick me
up from school. He knew all my friends and took me to play dates. We lived in the suburbs
of DC, in Silver Spring Maryland, in a wooded residential area where there were lots of other
kids around. He always said as long as I was back home before it was dark, I could go out
and play and ride my bike and go exploring. There was such a level of trust between us.
Pai loved to cook, to host and have people over, and he always loved watching the news,
whether it was Al Jazeera or BBC news or listening to the national public radio. Living in the US it was quite unique having a parent who watched and listened to so many news stories from different sources. On the way home from school we would talk about the news and he would ask me about it, even when I was a really little kid, and it made me feel so respected and loved and like an equal and his best friend. I’m really grateful for Pai, for his love and friendship and I’ll always have it”
"My initial thought was the old cliché of having a baby, and it is true, you don’t know love until you’ve had a child because it’s a completely different type of love.
But, that’s not my love story; Lake Annecy in France, that is my love story. It’s just the most beautiful place in the world. I’ve been going out to France during Summer and Winter for about 14 years because I was working in a ski resort. Then it changed from going out in the Winter to going out in the Summer and spending whole Summers out in France. Mainly in the Ski resort in Les Deux Alps, in the Southern Alps, which probably should also be my love story. But Annecy is a place that dreams are made of. I think it’s the lake with the cleanest water in Europe, and it’s surrounded by the Alps, and in the summer you can go to loads of little beaches.
My favourite thing in the world is to lie in the water on my back floating and looking up at the mountains, it’s heaven. We’ve been there with friends, and we’ve been there with my Mum. And I thought this summer we would have taken Elodie there. I’ve been dreaming of taking her and meeting some of our friends there and I just – I miss it. We’ve had so many happy memories there, James and I. Last time I was there I was pregnant with Elodie and it was just beautiful. And the time before that we both had our road bikes and cycled around the lake. It’s simple; you can sit in the sun, you can drink an orangina and then you can go and float on your back and watch people parapointing off the mountains.
Not being able to travel has made me really pine for it. I can’t wait to go. I’m looking forward to many, many more happy memories there. I can’t wait to take Elodie and this baby there and do family things. And also drink a really large glass of Rosé in the sun!
That’s my love story; it’s a place, not a person. But really it’s memories, memories of the past and looking forward to creating new ones”
"You hear some people say that they live and breathe music, and it does sound a wee bit corny, but that is honestly how it feels for me. I’ve always been known for drumming on tables from a young age, always picked up any instrument whether it’s been guitar, keys, drums. I’m a bit of a jack of all trades when it comes to instruments, and a master of none! Even guitar, I don’t know theory. But music is definitely something I enjoy; there's the creative side of writing songs, learning new instruments and new material. There's the production side – building your own track and putting your own spin on something. It can also be a love/hate relationship with music production because it can be incredibly frustrating at times when you’re trying to get an idea out that you’ve got in your head but you don’t know how to create it.
And I enjoy just listening; listening to artists and listening to ideas that other people have and simply enjoying music. Music can take you in many emotional directions. If I’m ever having a stressful day I can always rely on music to ease my thoughts. Having ADHD my mind can race on and I need to be brought back down and music does that for me.
Music is something that’s been there through my entire life and it’s something I couldn’t live without.
I never thought that it could be a career opportunity, it was actually a chance encounter – my mates’
Dad owned a pub and was let down by a musician one night and asked if I could pick up the guitar and just have a wee jam. Me and my friend Steven, from my band, did a rough set and it kind of took off from there. But I only went full time in music just before the start of the pandemic. I never actually thought it would be something that I could do full time, and it still doesn’t feel real. I don’t belong in an office, I know that for sure. But whatever I do in music, whether it’s making money performing live or just spending an entire day making music, even if at the end of the day I have nothing particularly to show for it, just that time spent messing around with sounds – I love that"
"A lot of people talk about night time being very romantic and the time of day where love flourishes, but for me early mornings is where I feel the most love. And that’s not only with my partner Zac and my dog Colby and the people that I love around me, but also just for myself. I think having this secret boxed time between 5:30/6am to 7:30/8am where you’re not getting any emails, you’re not getting any texts, you haven’t fully woken up and your allowed to be in this dreamy state of relaxing and being comfortable with the people you care about – I just love it. And as someone who has quite a fast brain, being able to take advantage of that slow time; have coffee with Zac, catch-up on the news, talk through what you dreamed about, go on a slow walk with Colby, that time of the day to me is magic. I rarely sacrifice it so that’s why I won’t stay up that late, I’ve started to go out a little bit less in the evenings because for me that is such a precious time that I wouldn’t ever want to get rid of.”
“I think the thing that brings me the most joy, that I love, is making things with my hands. Not specific
to pottery, although that is a new love. But I did have this thing when I was growing up – I went to art school and did jewellery design – where I used
to have a lot of angst about who I was as a person and not liking myself very much, and it translated into what I made. I wondered why people wanted to buy the things I'd made because I thought I was fooling everyone all
the time. I remember sitting at my degree show and this guy wanted to buy a piece of jewellery for his daughter, and I’d just got a First; top of my class, and I still thought I was fooling everyone with this stuff. Maybe because I thought I could have worked harder or put in more effort. And I think a lot of creatives feel that. I always put so much pressure on myself, and I worked solidly. I was in Uni 9-5 all day and then I’d come home and sit in front of the tv polishing bits of metal. Friends couldn’t understand why I felt that way.
But since I started improving my attitude towards myself and trying to understand myself a bit better,
I started to like what I was producing. I also took away the performance aspect of making. I’ve now decided that my creative pursuits are not about anyone else liking them. Which is a bit worrying with where my pottery may end up going because then what do I do with all the pots that I’ve made?!
Now every time I make something it’s about me enjoying the process – I’m not even necessarily interested in the final product - it’s about me in the moment. It’s about the mindfulness of it. It’s like being a kid again, you’re just making for making sake. That process of making and playing and recognising that not everything you do is for other people and that you can enjoy each moment of it rather than thinking about what it’s got to be and that it’s got to sell and that it’s got to be for someone else. That’s what I realise as I’ve got older; the beauty of making stuff just for me is so much better”
“I love guitar because it’s fun, and I enjoy time spent where I get totally lost in what I’m doing. Which is a hard feeling to describe. But essentially I just like mucking about, and getting lost in that.
I first started playing when I was about 15 or 16. Not seriously, just playing about. And recently I started getting back into it after years of not really playing at all. It’s been fun rediscovering playing and trying to get back in to it. I’m not quite as good as I once was, but I’m trying to get back to that, I just need to shake off a bit of the rustiness.
I have two electric guitars and an acoustic guitar. I like to learn songs, there are so many resources now, and if I hear a song I like figuring out how to play it. It’s quite satisfying. Being able to learn something by ear, I like that. I wouldn’t say there is a particular song that I keep going back to, not that I can think of off the top of my head. I just enjoy playing”
"There are lots of things I love, and I considered everything from my chickens to my latest waistcoat, but I've gone for the most enduring one: my family.
My wife and I have been together for nearly 17 years. I keep expecting to get bored, and I never do. Not because things are super exciting all the time, but in fact because they are calm, and we both have a secure place from which to explore the world together.
We were joined by our wee girl 7 years ago, and she astounds me all the time - she's confident, funny, loves to pun, and has an amazing capacity for kindness and understanding.
Together we are a strong, secure unit who have got each others' backs. I never really had that growing up (though my mother was a wonderful woman who tried her very hardest), and we tell each other almost every day other how lucky we are.
Partly because we're a queer family, our wider family has beautiful strange arms and legs to it, and we don't have a word for most of the members of it. Like my daughter's grandfather, who is the father of the man who agreed to help us with the biology of bringing a child into the world - there's no
*technical* word for what he is to me, but I love the bones of him.
Family isn't about biology or binding yourself to promises. It's about love, and honesty, and everyone being accepted as they are. Mine is the best love story."