Gabonese Photographer Yannis Davy Guibinga Shares a Magical Photo Series On Dealing with Grief

"The Grief" is a stunning photo series that is a reflection on a life experience many of us know too well.

Photo by Yannis Davy Guibinga.

Yannis Davy Guibinga is a 23-year-old Gabonese photographer whose work focuses on exploring the diversity of identities and cultures on the African continent and its diaspora.

Guibinga, who works and lives in Montréal, Canada, shared with OkayAfrica an otherworldly photo series titled The Grief. In this series, he explores the all too common life moment of loss and the subsequent process that comes with it.

In his artist statement on the project, he explains:

Every human life is marked by different events that has a permanent impact on the way we see and think about the world. Among many of these universal human experiences, losing a loved one remains one of the most painful and uncomfortable one to live through.

"The Grief" is a body of work illustrating in an abstract way the emotional journey on which a woman is taken after a loss. By going through seven consecutive stages, grief takes the protagonist through a journey that is simultaneously unpleasant, tumultuous and sometimes frustrating. By using the color black as a way to illustrate the evolution of the grief on the protagonist's body, I tried to interpret this Universal experience in a unique way, striving for a more complex and nuance representation of grief. This series of photos also aims to highlight the fact that grief is not something that is static, but rather something that constantly changes and evolves as time goes by.

Dig into The Grief below, and keep up with Yannis Davy Guibinga's work on Instagram and via his website.