Lemia Bodden

S + O (from Untitled Couples Project)
black and white medium format film photography

Relationships, in my eyes, are one of the most mysterious operations of being a human being. Out of thin air, people fuse their lives with a complete stranger’s and the action of creating the possibility of a lasting parallelism with another person seems very difficult and fascinating. Sometimes, we dissolve ourselves into the person that we are coupled with and begin to lose some sort of identity within the relationship. Personal mannerisms are interchanged and acquired. Ideas are shared. Different perspectives slowly eclipse each other, until they gently gel into one solid view.

I took these photographs as a test run of an idea that sprang forth from these very notions and to challenge and augment the awkwardness of humanism while artistically deconstructing coupling and attraction. There are theories and studies out there stating that people are usually attracted to others that bear similar facial structures and features to their own or begin to form the same physical traits as their partners over the time span of their relationship. These series of photos test the weaknesses and strengths of such theories and studies, to see, physically, how couples differentiate and assimilate each other.