By Victoria Calvo, Cristina Cimadevila, María Delgado, Hanane Moulay-Abdallah and Victoria Schaddel. Link to the work.
The photo book titled Grief in 7 Simple Steps aims to represent and visually explain the seven main stages of grief that a person goes through during a breakup. During the post-breakup phase, people usually go through stages of initial shock, followed by emotions like disbelief, denial, anger, bargaining, guilt, depression, and eventually, reaching feelings of acceptance and hope (Dryden-Edwards, 2022). This photo book helps us understand these seven sequential stages by following the journey of a female main character who recently experienced a breakup with her ex-partner.
The reason why we have chosen this topic for our photobook is because breakups are something that everyone will experience at least once in their lifetime, making it very relatable for the viewers who have experienced a similar event with a past lover. Additionally, this visual storyline can help the viewers understand their own emotions that they may feel during a separation, and therefore it can help them feel less alone during this difficult journey.
The digital photobook, with a total of 34 pages including the cover page and the back cover, starts with the cover page, which has a beige background with distinct cracked texture, which points at the fact that this is a story about heartbreak and rupture. Throughout the photobook, we have put together blank pages with a progressive gradient colour scheme that evolves as unfolding through the 7 stages of grief. For instance, when we go from the first to the second stage, the gradient slowly goes from an orange scheme to bright yellow. Each page represents a different emotion that is related to the chronological stages post-breakup. In all of the pages of our photo book, the main middle picture is always bigger in size in comparison to its surrounding pictures. This has been purposely executed in order to put the emphasis on the female character’s story.
Image Theory 