“The quest for love”

The couple’s jour­ney begins in their home­land, Croa­t­ia, and leads them through Oman, Sau­di-Ara­bia, to Iran and India, pass­ing through some of the remotest islands in the Pacif­ic, before set­ting off to Asia and cov­er­ing most of (South) Amer­i­ca and Africa. Over the course of 365 days, Davor and Andela col­lect­ed around 120 inter­views and many more pho­tographs. Some of these are exhib­it­ed in Berlin until the 20^th of Feb­ru­ary 2022 in f³ – freiraum für fotografie. Look­ing at these pho­tographs, it becomes evi­dent that the feel­ing of love express­es itself on a spec­trum from beau­ti­ful whole­some­ness to per­ceived cruelty.

As the exhib­it shows, the ques­tion of love – per­haps one of the most fun­da­men­tal expe­ri­ences of human life — man­i­fests in very dif­fer­ent, some­times even con­tra­dict­ing ways: Through Davor’s work, one is being intro­duced to tra­di­tion­al het­ero­sex­u­al cou­ples who were cho­sen by their fam­i­lies for each oth­er; homo­sex­u­al or even trans­gen­der cou­ples that fight against present norms and for the a pri­ori right to be in love in the first place; cou­ples that involve a third, a fourth per­son, indi­vid­u­als mar­ry­ing themselves. 

“A specter of feelings”

What unites all these dif­fer­ent forms of a sin­gle emo­tion is the inten­si­ty with which they con­front the involved par­ties: Davor and Andela show us the impact love can have on a rela­tion­ship between fam­i­lies, what love inspires to, what it can give, what it can destroy. We learn about sto­ries that touch us deeply, while oth­ers – per­haps diverg­ing too much from what we have come to see as “love” – don’t res­onate with us. The pho­tographs do not only show­case love, but they also car­ry through the entire­ty of emo­tions on the human spec­trum: sad­ness, deep affec­tion, help­less­ness, resilience, anger, brave­ness, hope.

Although love is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly a trea­sure ready to slip away at any time, and an asset con­tin­u­ing to grow over the years, it is evi­dent that love can hap­pen to any of us, at any time. After all, Davor and Andela inter­viewed cou­ples rang­ing from only five years old (the first love found in kinder­garten) up to lovers that recent­ly cel­e­brat­ed their 90^th birth­days. With­out a doubt, this speaks for the many forms and shapes in which most of us can relate to feel­ings of love. See­ing lovers all around the world that dif­fer not only in lan­guage and cul­ture but also in tra­di­tions and reli­gions, there must be a con­clu­sion, a pre­cise def­i­n­i­tion to be made. What reveals itself as “love” when we strip down all the dif­fer­ences and try to seek answers in sim­i­lar­i­ties? Is there even a com­mon denom­i­na­tor of love? It is such curios­i­ty that drove Andela and Davor to turn their hon­ey­moon into a year-long trav­el plan, and it is that same inter­est that con­tin­ues to present itself when vis­it­ing “Love around the world”.

“It takes more than love to love”

Cov­er­ing over 60 pho­tographs and a behind the scenes film doc­u­ment­ing the jour­ney and inter­view­ing process, the exhi­bi­tion lets us in on the back­grounds and frame­works of (suc­cess­ful) rela­tion­ships. It reflects hap­py faces, sad faces, can­did pic­tures, and soul-touch­ing expres­sions back to us, while forc­ing us to con­tem­plate our very own bonds. If love is not the absence of prob­lems, but rather the process through which hard­ships can be nav­i­gat­ed then what can we learn from these peo­ple? Is love a choice based on mutu­al respect and good-will or the spon­ta­neous, tingly feel­ing we all know too well? Can love be accept­ed as axiomat­ic or is it cul­ti­vat­ed, always in need of com­mit­ted care? It is up to the vis­i­tor to decide, but Andela and Davor cer­tain­ly don’t make the quest for love any eas­i­er to us. We are pre­sent­ed with cul­tures that don’t even have a word for love nor the need to explore it, we fol­low cou­ples and polyg­a­mous con­nec­tions through a life­time of strug­gle only to end up in sep­a­rate direc­tions, we find rela­tion­ships with vary­ing degrees of com­mit­ment to their sig­nif­i­cant other(s). But cer­tain­ly, this does not mean that rela­tion­ships with ini­tial prob­lems are doomed to fail. Rather on the con­trary, these pho­tographs give us phys­i­cal evi­dence of the way indi­vid­u­als can team up to con­quer even the most ardu­ous leaps of fate, rang­ing from tran­scul­tur­al dif­fer­ences to abduc­tions¹, rape and even ter­mi­nal illnesses. 

“Decon­struct­ing love”

In all these por­traits, the major theme dom­i­nat­ing the suc­cess of love and rela­tion­ships — or  lack there­of – is “con­scious deci­sion” as Andela puts it in an inter­view with FRANCE 24. The same lev­el of com­mit­ment seems to be the promis­ing fac­tor of a long-last­ing rela­tion­ship that is based on mutu­al deci­sion and effort. One tes­ti­mo­ni­al voice from the inter­views Davor con­duct­ed stands out: “Once he cheat­ed on me, but I didn’t allow him to hurt me with that. It made our love stronger”. It puts love as an abstract con­cept into prac­tice, show­ing how com­mit­ment and active deci­sion-mak­ing shape it rather than let­ting unpre­dictable feel­ings just run their course while hop­ing for the best.

The sto­ries are cap­ti­vat­ing and equal­ly shock­ing. They don’t allow for quick judge­ments but call for elab­o­rate reflec­tions, espe­cial­ly when the pre­sent­ed con­cept varies from our west­ern ones: Can we come to accept an arranged mar­riage with a much old­er man as equal­ly roman­tic as “love at first sight”? Do we con­demn polyan­drous² mar­riages in the Indi­an Himalayas or see them as the basic premise of sur­vival? After all, is love only a mod­ern inven­tion, fueled by the mass media and Hollywood?

There cer­tain­ly is no cor­rect answer to any of these ques­tions. But it doesn’t hurt to reflect one’s ideas on love and its expres­sions occa­sion­al­ly. Even Davor and Andela had to admit a cer­tain influ­ence after com­plet­ing their project: “This changed us. We decon­struct­ed some of our illu­sions and learned from the cou­ples’ inspir­ing sto­ries”. In let­ting us expe­ri­ence hon­est and inti­mate con­ver­sa­tions around love, they suc­ceed in por­tray­ing its under­ly­ing motives, con­structs and actions, ulti­mate­ly paint­ing a clear­er pic­ture of the human condition.

Davor Ros­tuhar was born in 1982 in Zagreb, Croa­t­ia. He start­ed his career as a writer and pho­tog­ra­ph­er in 2011 and worked for many well-known mag­a­zines, such as Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Croa­t­ia and Geo. He has vis­it­ed over 117 coun­tries and con­duct­ed more than 20 expe­di­tions around the world. His trav­els led him to some of the remotest areas on Earth and built the bases for the eight books he wrote and two doc­u­men­taries he pro­duced. His newest project, “Love around the world” was his hon­ey­moon trip with his wife Andela and can be vis­it­ed until the 20^th of Feb­ru­ary 2022 in freiraum Berlin.