All images: WIP Sappho Series – Sherry Wiggins and Luis Filipe Branco, 2022

I have been editing the images I made in Holland in October with Luis Branco.

And I have been thinking about you Sappho, the feeling of you, my feelings for you, embodying you . . .

Claude Cahun led me to you— your words, your songs, the fragments. Cahun called you “Sappho The Misunderstood” in her essay on you in their 1925 “Heroines” text.

I have been contemplating the rumors, the conjecture and the fictional histories written about you. These unaccountable stories about you have been going on for more than two thousand years.

Did you love women, did you love men, did you jump off the Leucadian Cliff because the beautiful boatman Phaon jilted you? Well of course you loved women and you loved men and you went for that young Phaon. But I don’t believe for a minute that you would jump  . . .

When I was shooting with Luis in the autumn landscape in Holland your words were kind of everywhere for me.  This is fragment 168 C – translated by Anne Carson in “If Not Winter-Fragments of Sappho.”

                                    spangled is

              the earth with her crowns

But the beauty, the colors, the roses, It can get a little overly romanticized with you. I like this one (I know I am overdoing the cigarette shots):

This following song/ fragment could have been written about any of your lovers or any of mine  . . . 

Sappho # 3 – Anne Carson’s translation “If Not, Winter – Fragments of Sappho.”

] to give

] yet of the glorious

] of the beautiful and good, you

            ] of pain.            ] me

] blame

] swollen

] you take your fill. For [ my thinking

] not thus

] is arranged

] nor

all night long ] I am aware

                           ] of evildoing

                        ]

                        ] other

                        ] minds

                        ] blessed ones

                        ]

                        ]

We did a series in the nighttime woods. I can’t decide between these two:

To read more about Sappho, her songs and her various histories and portrayals you can read my previous blog posts:

https://sherrywigginsblog.com/2022/09/17/part-one-sapphos-songs-posted-in-boulder-co-sept-17-2022/

https://sherrywigginsblog.com/2022/09/17/part-two-sappho-projections-portrayals-portraits-and-performances-posted-in-boulder-co-sept-17-2022/