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The loss of a loved one is a universal experience, yet each person’s loss is singular. For some, grief paralyzes and silences. For others, fond memories of the dead are a balm for the pain. And sometimes the loss of a friend or family member is an unexpected wellspring of creativity.
Recently, a group of New York Times journalists set out to understand the process of that creation.
“The Grief Project: 10 Artists on Working, Living and Creating Through Loss,” was published in The Times last month. The idea started at the end of last year when Andrew LaVallee, the editor of the Arts & Leisure section, read the novel “The Vulnerables,” by Sigrid Nunez, which takes place during the first wave of Covid-19 in the United States.
Since the pandemic, Mr. LaVallee, who was previously an editor at the Book Review, had sensed a growing discourse around grief. “It became something that more people were talking about or talking about more openly, and I wanted to tap into that,” he said.
The idea developed into a plan to interview artists who were part of this evolving conversation around grief and mourning, and he knew the reporter he wanted to conduct the interviews: Dina Gachman. A frequent contributor to The Times, Ms. Gachman had written extensively about the death of her mother in 2018 and her sister two years later.
Mr. LaVallee and Ms. Gachman found 10 artists across disciplines and cultural backgrounds whose work was propelled by their own grief or who had explored the topic generally. Ms. Nunez was an obvious choice. So was Jesmyn Ward, who wrote a memoir about the loss of five men in her life, including her brother. Ms. Gachman suggested the filmmaker Luke Lorentzen, whose documentary “A Still Small Voice” follows a hospital chaplain during the pandemic.
Before each interview, Ms. Gachman said she took a breath to prepare to dredge up a subject’s most difficult memories. “It’s hard when you’re getting in there and you see somebody getting emotional,” she said. But she leaned on her own experience to connect. “I never would have been able to do these interviews if I didn’t have my own deep grief,” she said. “I just wouldn’t even know how to start those questions.”
And, between the dark clouds, there were moments of light. In her interview, Ms. Nunez talked about finding solace and humor in animals. “She told me about some video of a rat taking a shower,” Ms. Gachman said. “It’s just such a random, funny little thing.”
As Jolie Ruben, a photo editor for arts coverage at The Times, considered art direction for the project, it was important to her that the photos didn’t serve as depictions of the grief they were attached to. “I don’t want an empty chair in a house, somewhere someone used to sit, but doesn’t any longer,” she said. Instead, she wanted some ambiguity — a space between the text and images the viewer’s emotions can fill.
Ms. Ruben knew the right person for that job. She pitched the idea of the project to the photographer Daniel Arnold, whose work deals with love and loss. When she offered to provide more details, he politely declined. “I felt like the more context I had, the more intentional I would be,” Mr. Arnold said in an interview. “I thought it would be better to just try to summon a grieving perspective than it would be to intentionally illustrate anything, or go looking for something,” he added.
Grief is woven through Mr. Arnold’s work. His brother Noah died in 2022, and he said he tried to carry Noah’s memory with him when he took pictures. He lives in New York City, always has a camera on him and tries to “get out and wander” with it every day. For this project, Mr. Arnold found himself mostly wandering at night.
“The camera shows you what you love,” he said, “and there’s this sort of magical language of love where ordinary things become infused with this magical meaning, like you see reminders of your love everywhere you look.”
To Mr. Arnold, grief has a similar magical language. “It’s a sort of damaged version of love, and the world does become infused with all this meaning,” he said. “And so I just kind of let the camera do its thing.”
Mr. Arnold and Ms. Ruben checked in every week to talk about his photographs, some of which were new and some of which came from his archive. They narrowed it down to about two dozen. Ms. Ruben described one that stood out — a picture of fog through tall grass that seems to fade away at one side of the frame. “That one is the end of the roll,” she said, referring to the last frame on a roll of film.
With this collection of voices, the conversation of grief continues. And as some elements of the pandemic move into the rearview mirror, Mr. LaVallee said he hoped this project would resonate with readers. “Something I’ve heard people talk about is that they don’t feel like we’ve really marked all that we’ve gone through in the pandemic,” he said. “I thought maybe this piece could help fill that void a little bit.”
