In this workshop, we were tasked with creating a photo book telling a story about something that is over looked in life. I had a few ideas but what stood out to me most was the idea of doing a photo book displaying the daily cycle of depression. I have been struggling with my mental health for years now and it is a thing that is quite overlooked about me because I always seem happy, enthusiastic and chatty but in reality behind closed doors I am a completely different person.
I had named the book “I will be happy right?” because that is a question that is on the minds of people that suffer from depression, when will we be happy or WILL we ever be happy? I wanted the book to be covered in black fingerprints to suggest a messy environment and uncleanliness, also it does represent someone coming up to the book and viewing it multiple times, like they are stuck in an endless cycle, hoping for a better outcome when they come back to view the book again only to find out they are stuck in the same endless loop.
The first page describes the starting of the mournful cycle. The image itself was supposed to indicate that the lighter is the little flame of hope that we have for the day and the darkness showing how blind we are to the day ahead of us, it really is a mystery if we will have a productive and peaceful day or a tsunami of emotions and destruction ahead.
The second page was the subject reaching for lollipops. I had the subject wear theatrical clown makeup to represent some sort of “mask” that we wear from day to day. The lollipops show that the meals that we have are not always very nutritious or that we simply don’t have the strength to provide for ourselves and our bodies. So you really can only reach for the first thing that you see.
I wanted all the pages to have a very cluttered and visually overloaded atmosphere because thats what depression feels like there is so much clutter around you and theres nothing you can do about it. You constantly feel overwhelmed, if you don’t have the energy to provide for yourself, how will you be able to keep the space around you clean?
“The happy pills” show that there is always a need for the medication because you will find it extremely hard without them. I always ask myself whats the point if the cycle repeats but this image is a mix of hope and despair because we always believe that these pills will take away any of the depression that we have. I added stamps and scraps of paper around it so that it can incase the picture and make it seem like its trapped.
The next three drawings were made up of some old drawings, scraps of paper, hand drawings and newspaper clippings. It carried on up and down the page so that the viewers eye followed the photo down and examined it to its full extent. I also included some scraps of the photographs that I took because I wanted it to feel like flashbacks of memories from the other cycles that we have went through.
These collages were pretty similar to the ones shown above except that some are landscape and some are vertical. There still is that repeating theme of clutter throughout the book so that it still feels crowded and almost uncomfortable to look at. I drew a landscape of trees in the second image because i felt as though it was fitting with the photograph, by doing this it also added emphasis on the quote in the middle which is important to the photograph.
The last two pages were intentionally left blank to represent the fact that only near the end of the cycle can we get dome kind of peace but even then it still doesn’t feel right and we don’t feel happy because before we know it we are back to the same cycle that we started at. I feel like depression does not get enough recognition and everyone has a different experience with it but the one thing thats the same is the cycle of it all. I feel like depression has become such a common thing that people choose to ignore it in some instances this is why I made this photo book. I loved this project and getting to tell a story with my artwork and photography.