04
What Was Yours, and is Now Mine
Our love for others transforms us, from the music we like to the ways we see the world, and we often see that the most when relationships are tested, strained, or cut off. What Was Yours, and Is Now Mine explores the duality of love and grief, and their effects on identity.
The book is split into three sections: philia (friendship), eros (romance), and storge (family). It's a non-linear collection of poetry, blog posts, lyrics, survey responses, and more, each from a person grappling with the residues of love.
I've always been entranced by the language spoken through flowers. Throughout this book, various flowers are used to translate feelings of both love and loss. Section are represented by different sympathy flowers, each telling the story of how we are all molded into who we are now by the people that we hold close.
Imagery shows these flowers at various levels of abstraction throughout the book. High-quality scans through sheets of vellum highlighted natural textures, while various distortion effects play with form.
I sent a survey to the people that I surround myself with in order to collect some of their personal stories. I curated ten anonymous responses to spread throughout the book, ranging from light in tone to absolutely gut-wrenching. I felt honored that people trusted me enough to write so much, so these are the only spreads of my 110+ pages that use white backgrounds.
