Simon Bray AKA Loved&Lost

“This project is about building empathy and understanding.”

Weston Park Museum is home to relics and art from Sheffield’s history, but for CreativeMornings Sheffield’s #CMLost, stories from the past of individuals, rather than the city, will be told.

Simon Bray AKA Loved&Lost is a documentary photographer who has been travelling the UK gathering stories and reliving memories with people who have lost loved ones. His exhibition Loved&Lost, brings together these stories at Weston Park Museum.

‘In a way this project is talking therapy.’

Loved&Lost began when Simon shared memories of his own father, who he lost to prostate cancer in 2009. He wanted to find a way to acknowledge and remember those people we have lost in a public way and to help people relive memories they shared.

Each person featured in the project shares photos of a treasured memory with Simon, before they return to that same place, with a camera. Simon takes pictures as memories, stories and anecdotes are shared. The person may no longer be there, but reminiscing brings their memory to life.

“It’s me and Paul, sitting on the steps together, and taking a selfie, and I chose that picture because we both look so stupidly happy in it, and we really were.”

Maike shares a picture of her and boyfriend Paul by the sea in Penzance. It wasn’t a special day, just an evening by the sea, for Maike, the photo is special because they’re so “wind swept and love swept”

Maike shares memories of Paul, of his geeky glasses that attracted her to him, and how she still carries around with her today, having had her own lenses put into them.

For Simon, Loved&Lost invites people to speak about loved ones they are grieving, it gives them space to share memories and in doing so, he hopes to help share the burden of bereavement. During his exhibition, Weston Park will host a Death Café, a place where people of all ages and backgrounds can gather to eat cake, drink tea and talk about death.

“Even though the pain of the loss may remain, may this go some way in relieving the hurt and the stigma of death and act as a public declaration that death has lost its sting.”

Loved&Lost is being exhibited at Weston Park Museum until 19 April 2020.