Shock Statement
Shock
The series of self-portraits in Shock depict my entry into mourning. At once private and confessional, its images expose the profound devastation I experienced with my mother’s passing. In the aftermath of her death, my life was stripped bare, as though light and colour had been extracted from my world, rendering me alone in the darkness. I grasped for some way to live in a world without her guidance.
These treescape portraits attend to the foreign and strained experience of suffocating under the loneliness of grief, while also feeling closed in and observed like an object of curiosity by well-intending loved ones offering sympathy. I yearned for my mother’s presence while also leaning away from the solace of friendship. Each image in Shock is set against a stark black background—a contained terrarium of grief, observed in isolation. The beauty of the natural landscape sharply strikes against the darkness, a silhouette of longing, of solitude, even of hope—a document of the traumatic impact that marked the crisis of losing my mother.
Good Grief
Recognition
2021 Honourable Mention, Longing, Professional, Fine Art, Monochrome Awards
2021 Honourable Mention, Longing, Professional, Fine Art, Monochrome Awards
2021 Short List for Exhale, Night Life Collection, Life Framer
2019 Honourable Mention for Shock (series), Fine Art, 14th Julia Margaret Cameron Awards, Barcelona, Spain
2019 Honourable Mention, Shock (series), Nature, Trees, International Photography Awards (IPA)
2019 Finalist, Shock (series), Art Photography Awards, Lensculture, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2018 Vancouver Semi-Finalist for Exhale, Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series, Gallery Jones, Vancouver, Canada
Exhibition
2021 Dusk To Dawn, Don't Take Pictures, Online (Longing)
2021 Melancholia, FotoNostrum Gallery, Barcelona, Spain (Exhale)
2020 The 14th Pollux Awards, Foto Nostrum, Barcelona
2019 Portal, A Smith Gallery, Johnson City, Texas, USA
2019 Abandoned Landscapes, The SE Center of Photography, Greenville, South Carolina
2019 Altered Realities, curated by Brooke Shaden, Photoplace Gallery, Online
2018 Semi-Final Show, Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series, Gallery Jones, Vancouver, Canada
Press/Published
2020 Shira Gold - Finding Her Breath, Cover and feature, PhotoEd Magazine
2019 Shock, L'ingresso new mondo del dolourdi Shira Gold, feature, Frizzi Frizzi Magazine, Guilia Ficicchia
2019 Ruby Slippers and Retrotopia: Lensculture Winners,, The Guardian, United Kingdom, Mee - Lai Stone,
2019, Shock by Shira Gold, Lensculture