Vergeßt mir die Liebe nicht!
An essay about love from Alexander von Wiedenbeck
The kiss is gone, but love stays. A beautiful quote from the five-year-old Jette, after the evening ritual of the good night kiss from her mother. This quote could not be more appropriate for me today. But I’m not talking about love for a mother or a child. Rather, it is about the one, true and heartfelt love; those who can inspire us beyond the sky and at the same time tear us into a deep abyss. Is it possible to show such strong feelings and emotions and this schizophrenic interplay of exhilaration and deep abyss pictorially through photography – is that even possible? I say yes. Emotions can be made visible, even a strong and inexplicable feeling like love. Like ones said so beautifully: “A picture is worth a thousand words” … but a thousand words can also tell a lot.
Only recently, as an adult man, I was able to experience such a love for the first time in my life, recognizing the essential difference between lovingness and true love. But that did not make it any easier and as I had to learn as well, this knowledge does not necessarily lead to a happy ending. We flew far too high and then the pain was too deep. Vergeßt mir die Liebe nicht! is therefore the most personal photographic work to date, or perhaps even the most personal story I have to tell.
