MADDI BROWN
Paired With: Nicholas Andreas Vrenios
Untitled
Nicholas Vrenios was passionate about a lot of things; his camera, guitar, and skateboard among others. In him I see a lot of myself, a young artist excited about life and all it had in store. When he died, Nick was 20, the age I am now. I imagine we would’ve been friends if he was in this timeline or I in his. I wanted this project to reflect the feeling of grief but not in a hopeless way. I wanted this to reflect how when we lose people in life it is so sudden. They’re there with us, then all of a sudden, they just aren’t. I wanted this to have a feeling of beauty and nature because Nicholas enjoyed life so much. When I lost my friend to suicide last year I remember the initial moments of loss. It was so painful, maybe the most pain I’ve ever felt. I remember not understanding, endlessly crying and begging for him back. I also remember these in-between moments of clarity, where for a moment I could only think about how beautiful a day it was outside. The middle photo in this set is supposed to represent those moments of clarity in grief, where the world aligns for a moment again. The first and last photo has the middle photo as a faded background, this to me is a reminder that even with the loss, beauty persists. Nicholas Vrenios was a beautiful person, and even though he’s physically not with us today, his memory lives on in the beauty that surrounds us every day.