Love Story 2001

Arsen Savadov, sometime between 1980 and now, captured this image of women and swans. It's a photograph and not a painting, but images are still made through the body, with a camera, not a brush. I wonder if the women are consoling the fake swans? Are they injured or sick? I'm wondering what it might have been like for Savadov to set this scene. What were they all thinking? How did they come to be here? Are the woman reflecting on the pond behind them? I feel like the viewer is a voyeur to this story. I imagine the set must have been a chilly affair, being outdoors. I love how there's an exchange across time. I love to think that artists and their models were in this conversation over time. It's a kind of embodied expression, and it's also embracing all the ambiguity. There's room for a lot of different ways of understanding the world.