These photos compose an on-going personal project to express my feelings and emotions during a personal crisis. This is therapy for me — photo-therapy. This is the second such project I've undertaken. It started when my therapist suggested I find a way to express my anger. Rather than hitting a tree with a stick, I chose to photograph my anger. Photography allows me to reflect on the emotion, then express it and share it with others in a healthy way. Taking that first photo of anger re-opened my desire to photograph other feelings.
I chose the artist's wooden manikin as the central subject because I needed a body to help convey each given emotion, but I did not want to limit the viewer's experience through depicting a single gender, race, color, definition of beauty or other physical attribute.
The other consistent feature in most photos is low-key lighting. I wanted the images to be holistically dramatic, so the posing, lighting, set and props all contribute to that.
I hope that you, the viewer, can see something in yourself in these photos. While I pray that you are not feeling these emotions or facing a situation that triggers them, I hope that you can empathize with my pain, and, for a moment, walk beside me as I navigate this painful reality.
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