Keri‘s story came at such an opportune time for me to hear it. We shot this image just days after a relationship I was in ended. I was tender and sad, as well as hesitant to try to make a photo about love. As it turned out, creating this image and talking about it turned out to be just what I needed.

Keri had heard about my project, looked at the site, and sent me an email telling me she was very recently engaged and wanted to create an image for her fiancé. What I didn’t know is that she had only known Eric for four months! They had met once, over the holidays, while she was spending time with a good friend in New Hampshire. Six months passed, and the next time they encountered each other, there was an instant, easy connection between them. They carried on a long distance love affair, seeing each other for a week of every month, and then in September he moved in with her in Berkeley. Two months later, on her birthday, he proposed.

She is a visual artist, and he, a musician. She feels that they complement each other in that way, and that this is just a metaphor for the many other ways that they work well together. He brings a vitality, a joy, a richness to her life, similar to that brought by music to silence. She told me how past relationships had been hard and she was beginning to think that she would never find a partner that fulfilled her. But when Eric showed up it just felt right on so many levels.

As I search for love, and mourn the ending of a relationship, I am inspired by their real-life love story.

Click here to see a portrait of Keri.