“Can’t you see I’m no good without you…”
Those words alone are enough to evoke a deep, consuming, unabashed love.
“How can I go on dear without you?”
When Miss Billie Holiday is sang, her melancholy tones gave way to a kind of romance that is rarely known.
“All of me, why not take all of me?”
I love listening to Lady Day when I get back from a wedding and start editing the moments that I’ve captured. I like to imagine Miss Holiday singing to the lovely couple. Perhaps she’s happy to see two people so happily in love. Perhaps her happiness is tinged by sadness for never having found a love of her own, only ever singing about love and never having someone of her own. I think of the woman who as a child, worked in a brothel, whose mother was prostitute, who was addicted, who struggled as a black artist in a white world. I think of all of the pain in her life, and I am grateful for her ability to channel that pain into something beautiful and transcendent.
In this series, I wanted to imagine a wedding for Billie. I wanted to see her swept up in the kind of love she sang about – so swept up that after a particularly good show, she choose to elope and spend the rest of her days with the one she loved.
Photographer: Jennifer Sosa // @jensosa
Love this! Love your work generally and this beautiful site. So glad I found it today.
Thank you for taking the time to sweetly comment! I’m happy you found me as well 🙂