I am currently working on a project that will document my
ongoing battle with depression and anxiety. One of the many struggles of living
with depression and anxiety is knowing that your mind naturally, automatically
puts a negative skew on reality. This leads you to constantly question what is
reality and what is your warped perspective of it. Did she really say that to
me like that? Am I being too
sensitive? Is everyone really against me, or does it just feel like everyone is against me? Not only does depression affect how I remember, but also what I remember. After particularly
emotional encounters I can often feel so drained that it is like I have
completely blacked out; I cannot remember what just happened or what was said,
all I know is that I feel like I have nothing left in me.
Aripiprazole, December 2015, Lindsey Max
While not trusting your perception of the world is difficult
and frustrating for anyone, it can be especially problematic for an aspiring
documentary photographer. How can I ensure that my photographs present an
objective view of reality when I don’t even know what an objective view of
reality is? In class this week we were discussing the issue of conveying an
unbiased depiction of reality, and I was starting to feel fairly disheartened
about my own ability to do so, when one of my classmates, Sara, made the
comment that “any photograph can be a skewed version of what reality is.” These
words struck me quite deeply, and the more I thought about them the more I
realized that there is no such thing as a completely objective photograph. Every
choice a photographer makes—cropping, angle, dodging, burning, lighting, and
the thousands of manipulations that can be done in Photoshop—affects how the
viewer reads the image. There is always a little piece of the photographer in
every photograph they create.
For my own project, I want my images to be personal yet
universal, photographs that both tell my story while being familiar to those
fighting similar battles. Though my images may not be completely objective,
they are real depictions of how I see my world.
Give up on objectivity! There's no such thing unless you're a photographer who creates copies of something else. If your photography begins in the real world, it is automatically subjective. The more honest you are in your depiction of the personal, the better the chance of conveying the universal. The former leads inexorably to the latter.
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