This project is meant to represent the Ancient Greek Types of Love and, according to the Ancient Greeks, there are eight types of love.
I myself struggle with portraying my emotions towards people, especially those of both heartbreak and love. My ultimate goal with these series of photographs is to express and display the eight types of love in people. I hope to express the pleasure in terms of our human ranges of understanding and feeling love.
People often boil love down to a specific meaning, or perhaps specific actions based on their own beliefs. People fail to realize, however, the different forms that love comes in. When someone asks “Do you love me?” my only response is “in what way?” Love can mean many different things to many different people, which is something many refuse to acknowledge or fail to recognize. Through the settings of nature and the manipulation of human bodies and faces, different emotions are conveyed, each dependent on the type of love being experienced. We have a very large human capacity to express emotions.
I view this project as a way of expressing such feelings I cannot in my own words. It’s my own personal expression, while hopefully relating to a larger audience who also struggle with emotional and verbal expression. I hope that, with this project, people are able to understand the larger parts of love, including aspects they have or haven’t experienced before.
Ludus - a playful love, seen as the affection between young lovers.
Pragma - a long standing love: a deep understanding that developed between long-married couples.
Philautia, a form of self-love and care; it’s not unhealthy nor obsessive — it has nothing to do with vanity, but rather, self-love in its healthiest form.
Agape
Agape is a selfless love, higher than ourselves, and more complex than we can understand, it’s infinite empathy, boundless and compassionate. It's everything my grandfather was.
About the Artist
Sam (she/her) is currently a 15-year-old sophomore at Success Academy's High School of the Liberal Arts in Harlem. Inspired by the beauty of everyday life and the relationships that shape it, Sam found her calling behind the lens while documenting the lives of her family, friends, and loved ones. Currently honing her skill in a photography class, Sam is dedicated to exploring the endless possibilities of visual storytelling, seeking to immortalize the fleeting moments that define human experience. As she continues to embark on her creative journey, Sam plans on continuing to take photography courses, as she even plans to pursue AP Art and Design in her senior year.
This project was created as part of the Future Imagemakers program in the NYU Department of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts in Spring 2024. To see all the 2024 Future Imagemakers projects, click here.