Art for 'Photophobia'

[numberthescars]

Oh yes,  Photophobia (NC-17) by the talented (and patient) holyfant. I can't stop praising this story: it's Kate/Irene, written in some of the most gloriously subtle and poetic prose I've ever read. Kate's reminiscences are dream-like, nostalgic, sharp, painful, deep with buried emotion, glittering with a surface beauty atop something so utterly

Comments

[holyfant]

Oh. Oh. I've been sitting here staring at this for a full five minutes, and still, just oh.

I really can't tell you how much I love this, but I'll try: when I opened this window and saw the top photographs (especially the one of Kate standing in the doorframe), I already squeed, because it made me realise that there had to be pictures like that in their home, and later in Kate's flat, and ahh. Then I scrolled down and saw that there was Rosalind Halstead in other things, so different, so beautiful, so soft and real and gosh. And then there is Irene, who looks remarkably soft in these photos, like you've laid the light over them. *sighs* And all of the other pics - hints of moment, of places that must mean things, and I can literally imagine stories for all of them and it's amazing.

Then I got to the drawing of them and my breath hitched, because they... I dunno how to explain this well - they just really look like characters, like people in a story, and that was actually such a big part of how I built Kate into the story, as someone who is constrained by so much narrative, while her own thoughts work in such a different way.

And the numbering! The layering! You've actually brought the craziness of my chronology into this and made it work because they overlap and different glimpses peek out and they feed into each other and OH MY GOD.

So I'm sitting here, feeling a little faint with my love for this, and then I click on it to see it a bit larger and I realise that the ending of the story is printed inside them. I GASPED. It's so perfect, that, because it's the point of maybe, of possibility, different from all of the others that were past and reality, and that they're reaching for each other across that moment... Like, I find it hard to say anything other than fjdskhigtkerhgimjk.

I LOVE THIS SO MUCH AND I WILL REC IT EVERYWHERE. EVERYWHERE.

[holyfant]

Oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh

I only just realised that the numberings really correspond to the parts in the story and that the picture for 15 is Kate's mother's hospital bed and that the girl in -3 is Kate twirling her hair around her finger and that 18 is that kiss, yes, that kiss and AHHHH I AM DEAD.

*crawls away, crushed by the weight of her love for this*

[numberthescars]

Oh wow! Thank you so much for this comment, it really made my day. :D :D :D I have to admit, I was nervous about posting this because I just didn't think the picture lived up to the story. I kept fiddling around with it and changing it, and finally I was just like ARG just post it already, self! So I'm really over the moon to hear you liked it. :)

Actually, the chronology bit was the part that I pictured first--even as I was reading Photophobia, I just kept seeing images of each little vignette in my head, with the corresponding number written on it (this is how we deal with photos in my family: every picture has a date written on it somewhere, usually the back). The part I most agonized over was the "0" bit. I wanted to communicate your point about writing and images and how they ultimately come from the same source...I'm not totally satisfied with the result, but I'm so glad to hear you like how it turned out. :)