This couple took ‘Breakup Photos’ - Here’s why they did it

You don’t need to be a relationship expert to know that breakups suck—and they often keep on sucking well after you’ve parted ways.

Harrison Bach, a 22-year-old bio-medical sciences senior at Western Michigan University, decided to document that by taking a series of breakup photos with his ex-girlfriend, Jackie Martin, roughly a year after they broke up IRL.

Harrison posted the photos on Facebook, but it wasn’t until a friend of his posted them on Twitter that they blew up—as things online that make you stop and think do.

Some people have even made memes out of them.

Harrison says he wanted to make an “ironic, humor-based photo album” that takes a different look at relationship photos.

“People frequently take nice 'nature-based' photos with them and their significant other when their relationship is going great,” he says.

“My goal was to take photos in that same setting but at the point of the relationship where the couple is broken up or in turmoil.”

Jackie, a 20-year-old student at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles, looks pretty bummed out in the pics, but she says she and Harrison actually had fun with the process.

“I was home in Michigan for winter break and he had this quirky idea of doing these photos,” she says. “I was like, ‘I’m down.’”

The couple broke due to the distance, Jackie says, but she still considers him her best friend. So she was totally OK with going into the woods with her ex to take a bunch of pics reflecting their feelings about their breakup.

“It didn’t feel that weird,” she says, noting that it was supposed to poke fun at the super-happy photos couples take when they’re in a relationship.

“It was definitely kind of a joke, an ironic sort of thing.”

Jackie says they wanted to capture all of the feelings you go through when you have a breakup—and they did—but they were laughing in between takes.

“It wasn’t a super-serious thing,” she says. She says she’s surprised by how much attention the photos have gotten and says she’s not offended by the memes.

“If people are getting laughs out of them, all the better,” she says.

Harrison says he knows that a lot of people think that they had someone document their actual breakup.

“In a funny way I guess that's the ultimate irony these photos could have reached,” he says.

“So I did my job, just not the way I originally intended.”

Jackie says she and Harrison still talk regularly, and he had this to say about their relationship: “Looking back, I do miss her like crazy now. All this attention is bound to do something interesting to our relationship, I guess I'm excited to ride this out and see what it is. I’m certainly missing Jackie a lot more these days.”