{"id":180078,"date":"2018-09-05T02:52:22","date_gmt":"2018-09-05T06:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=180078"},"modified":"2018-09-05T02:52:22","modified_gmt":"2018-09-05T06:52:22","slug":"heartbreak-breakups-captured-caitlin-cronenbergs-photo-book-endings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/09\/05\/heartbreak-breakups-captured-caitlin-cronenbergs-photo-book-endings\/","title":{"rendered":"Heartbreak, breakups captured in Caitlin Cronenberg’s photo book ‘The Endings’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
\u201cWhen you look at the photos we kept referencing, ‘New York, I Love You,’ and these short films about love.\u201d (File Photo<\/a>:
Caitlin Cronenberg\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TORONTO \u2014 It’s the end of a love story, not the beginning, that fascinates photographer Caitlin Cronenberg and set designer Jessica Ennis.<\/p>\n

They wanted to detail the raw, messy, gut-wrenching emotions of a breakup in an elaborate new photo book, enlisting actresses including Julianne Moore, Keira Knightley, Tatiana Maslany and Imogen Poots.<\/p>\n

Each of the 28 stories in \u201cThe Endings\u201d could have been films themselves, acknowledges Cronenberg, who took a cinematic approach to crafting the book by drafting elaborate back stories and leaning on Ennis for detailed sets and props to build entire worlds for each scene.<\/p>\n

It all began with the two Toronto friends sharing their own stories of heartbreak, and hearing the \u201cuniversal\u201d experiences of friends and colleagues who had similar accounts of being overwhelmed by emotion upon losing love.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Jess and I were exploring the topic we realized just how much it bonds people together. You can talk about your insane breakup and your ex and a person you just meet will say, ‘Oh my God, I just had a similar experience,’ and all of a sudden you’re bonded,\u201d says Cronenberg.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s a certain romance in something ending and I think that we sort of shot it in that way,\u201d adds Ennis. \u201cWhen you look at the photos we kept referencing, ‘New York, I Love You,’ and these short films about love.\u201d<\/p>\n

In one collection, Patricia Clarkson plays a woman crouching in the shadows of a campus library book stack, waiting to meet her much younger lover for a clandestine rendezvous.<\/p>\n

In another, Juno Temple appears as a heartbroken woman who spirals into risky behaviour in the wake of her loss, while elsewhere, a naked Alison Pill is smeared with blue paint and swoons in front of an art installation she dedicates to her unrequited love.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery person has an emotional response to love ending and it’s not always negative, it’s not always crying. (There’s) relief, exuberance, devastation \u2014 these are all the things you can experience with a relationship ending and we wanted to run the gamut on that and see if we could tell all of those stories, or a wide range,\u201d says Cronenberg.<\/p>\n

The intensely intimate shoots consisted largely of just Ennis, Cronenberg and their actress. Cronenberg says she encouraged each woman to move freely through the scene uninterrupted, and to embody whatever emotion that came to her as she immersed herself in the character.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really hard to cut some of them. Noomi (Rapace) really comes to mind, because we had a playlist going of songs that were inspiring the mood and she was just going for it and she kept coming up with new things \u2014 she was putting rings on her toes, she was pulling pages out of books and making little castles and doing all this incredible stuff with the props,\u201d she says of \u201cThe Girl with the Dragon Tattoo\u201d star, who plays a jilted woman who insists on living alone.<\/p>\n

It took seven years to co-ordinate the whole project, with the duo producing every element \u201cfrom bottom to top\u201d \u2014 from scouting locations to sourcing wardrobe to arranging craft services and transportation for all cast and crew.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were clearly in above our heads in a lot of ways,\u201d says Ennis, chuckling.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we look back at the book we can’t believe that we pulled it off, basically,\u201d agrees Cronenberg.<\/p>\n

They shot in Toronto, New York and London, and captured anywhere from 1,200 to 4,000 stills for each story \u2014 even though some ended up whittled down to just one image for the book, says Cronenberg.<\/p>\n

Despite Cronenberg’s auspicious movie lineage \u2014 her father is director David Cronenberg \u2014 she says she has no aspirations to make a feature film herself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI appreciate film and I love watching films and I enjoyed being part of film sets and doing stills on film sets but I just really love the feeling of capturing a moment,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe challenge for me is to capture that one moment that tells a story and to be able look at it and say this is what I intended to say with this singular moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, she notes she and Ennis did make a short film inspired by the photography book to help promote it. The film premieres Sept. 10 at an event co-hosted by the Toronto International Film Festival.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TORONTO \u2014 It’s the end of a love story, not the beginning, that fascinates photographer Caitlin Cronenberg and set designer …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":180079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","mauthors-cassandra-szklarski","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}