I hadn't planned a story.
The house already had one.
Toronto, 2017. A Victorian house on Dovercourt Rd. They call it the Darling Mansion.
I chose this place for my final shoot before leaving Toronto for Beirut. A shoot with two stylists I'd met a few days earlier. One model. Borrowed clothes. The night before, I'd met a man in an art gallery in Yorkville. He declined when I invited him to participate. The next morning, he surprised me by showing up. He wore a red jacket.
On the walls, animal heads. Deer, a bear reduced to its skin and open jaw, antlers isolated like relics. Damask wallpaper, red on gold. Mirrors everywhere — above beds, facing beds, above sinks, on the ceiling.
I photographed. She posed. He entered the frame, left the frame. Her face changed depending on who was looking.
Something was being constructed that I hadn't yet named.
It was later that I understood what I was doing. I hadn't staged an encounter. I had documented a hunt. The animals on the walls weren't decor. They were premonitions. Each time danger entered the frame, the house offered me a body already dead, mounted, preserved in the posture of having been killed.
The last image is shot from above, from the ceiling mirror. She lies on the bed. She is very pale. The red has left the house. Only blue and wood remain.
The title comes from a song by The Knife. A Lung. The lung. The organ of held breath, and the first to let go.
