‘The Sea That Surrounds Us’ is a project by photographer Maureen Drennan that documents her husband’s battle with depression and her own battle to understand it.

The name of the project is taken from a line from a love poem by Pablo Neruda called Night on the Island, a title that reflects the photographer’s decision to intersperse pictures of her husband Paul with pictures from Block Island, Rhode Island, which is where she spent time as a child. The barrenness and isolation of the island works as both a physical embodiment of the distance she felt from her husband as well a tangible manifestation of her husband’s own interior state during his depression. They’ve since put this difficult time behind them, but her series serves as a reminder of how fragile we are as humans, and how difficult it is to truly understand the experiences of another person, no matter how close they may seem to us.

More info: Maureen Drennan (h/t)