Some say my dad’s death was the spark that ignited my depression, but this feeling has been brewing for a while. I started to notice a sadness creep in a few years into my 40s. I searched “depression in women” and stumbled across articles stating women are the most depressed at age 44. I was, at that very moment, 44.

Loss during this time in a woman’s life can weigh heavily. Children are getting older and need the comfort of a parent less; the health of one’s own parent(s) is starting to fail, and hormonal shifts begin.

By using the color blue, which for hundreds of years has been associated with melancholy and sadness, these images evoke this period in my life and how it affects those around me. A mid-point, as I am stripping down, taking stock, and finding a new place amongst the loss.

For many, this has been a very difficult year. As I read the Artist Statements and looked at the images submitted for the Me&Eve Grant, I was struck by how often the words depression, loss, grief, heartbreak, and time were repeated to describe the work. Some wonderful projects did celebrate nature, childhood, the body, and the peace that comes with acceptance, but overwhelmingly the submitted work was about struggle.

I feel privileged to have been allowed to see the bearing of so many souls and how making the images were often the antidote. It was an intimate experience.

It was not an easy task to choose only one project to receive this Grant. I was very impressed to see the diverse ways the photographers chose to tell their stories and to create images that reflected states of being that are often more felt than seen.

For this fourth Me&Eve Grant I have chosen Blue by Heather Evans Smith.

Blue is a poetic essay that explores the personal experience of depression in mid-life. Smith created a melancholic yet tender essay that explores the complex feelings around aging and the death of her father as a way to help her find “a new place amongst the loss.” These images were also a comfort to me as they so gently embraced the sadness that can arise during the very universal changes that mid-life can bring to us all.

I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to spend time with all of the artists who shared their images and their hearts. Thank you.

- Sarah Leen, Founder & Editor, Visual Thinking Collective