Still, Life: A Photographic Journey Through Grief

“Still, Life” is artist Sarah Treanor’s response to the sudden death of her fiancé in 2012. In the years after his death, she created self-portraits to express her experience of grieving and living on. The project culminated in 40 captured images and personal essays that explored grief in a uniquely layered, creative approach. In 2022 – the ten year anniversary of her fiancé’s death – 20 of the images and accompanying excerpts of her original essays were exhibited for the first time as a solo exhibition with Up Front Art Space in Akron, Ohio.

This project has created powerful dialogs on art and healing over the years, which was expanded into a much deeper experience through the solo exhibition of 2022. Viewers were invited into an intimate experience of quite literally walking through another’s grief journey. By choosing to enter into this world, they were invited into their own grief in new and different ways.

While the series was initially created for the healing of one individual, it has gone on to create a deeper conversation on grief and art – challenging many to explore their own grief in new ways, as well as the value of creativity and vulnerability in the healing process. With the initial response from viewers of this first exhibition being so positive, the artist plans to exhibit the work in further cities in coming years and continue the deeper dialogue on art and healing.