9.30 am
Taking stock
« Je dormais mal, je mangeais mal, je ne sortais plus. J'avais 29 ans et l'impression d'en avoir fini. »
After a break-up
Lausanne
“I no longer knew who I was on my own.”
Eleven years together, then nothing. Sarah came to Kaina three months after the separation, “to see what I look like now”.
Sarah, 29 Lausanne · The Experience Pass
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“For eleven years I was half of someone. It took a single day to become a whole person again.”
Her day
In four images
From arrival to portrait.
Every Kaina day follows the same movement: arriving, talking, letting yourself be photographed, and leaving with an image that stands as proof.
11.15 am
The moment it turns
« J'ai pleuré, et deux minutes après j'ai éclaté de rire. Ça faisait des mois que je n'avais fait ni l'un ni l'autre. »
3.40 pm
Outside, at last
« On est sorties. J'ai fermé les yeux et j'ai respiré. C'est bête, mais je n'avais pas fait ça depuis longtemps. »
5.30 pm
What she took home
« Sur cette photo, je suis seule. Et pour la première fois depuis la rupture, ça ne me fait pas peur. »
Her story
Sarah, 29
In her own words.
Sarah was 18 when she met her partner. She is 29 today. “My whole adult life, I've been a ‘we’. When he left, I literally didn't know what I liked. Not the music, not the films, not even how I used to dress.”
She arrived closed off, wary, ready to leave. That is what the morning was for: forcing nothing. Talking about eleven years, about the grief nobody ever calls grief, about the shame of being 29 and starting over.
The shift came around 11 am, somewhere between the tears and the laughter. Then we went out for a walk, because the weather was good and she hadn't been outside in three weeks.
“I thought the photographs would be the point. Actually, the photographs were just the end of it. The real thing was that someone listened to me all day without once telling me what I ought to feel.”
Other stories
Stories
They came too.
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