Photography, Lauren Finkle
The Temple; The Lovers; The Earthquake; L’Amour, 2021; and the men tell it this way — are woven through with romanticism, some of it beautiful and some of it catastrophic.
These photos are all taken on 35mm film, which is my own form of love. Film photography is tangible and prone to error, sometimes marred by my human hands, and it is heavy with equipment and odds and ends the way love sometimes is.
I wanted to contrast the obvious representations of love, from lovers entwined to Cupid himself, to the twisted: Perseus holding the head of Medusa. Perseus in this statue is designed as the victor, slaying the monster and setting into motion the events that would crown him a mythological romantic figure. I like to look at it as Athena turning Medusa into a Gorgon as an act of love — finally giving Medusa the ability to protect herself against men who would harm her. Maybe it is my own romanticism and queerness that wants to tell the story another way, with women at the heart.
Lauren Michelle Finkle (she/her) is an emerging writer and photographer living in San Francisco, California. Her work has appeared in journals including Westwind, Bluing the Blade, The Coffin Bell, and HASH Journal. Lauren received her BA in English and creative writing at the University of California, Los Angeles. You can find her on Instagram at @laurenmichellefinklephotos.