Janelia Mould has created a photoseries called A Girl Called Melancholy – A Story Of Depression. She claims that she attempted to capture the "lack of being" and that her images are completely subjective from her point of view and experiences with depression.
The series is a complication of images of young women that represent her, but each one has their faces erased, as if it's invisible. She explains this by saying;
“The character in this series has no face and sometimes has missing limbs, firstly, so that anybody that either suffers from depression or has dealt with it in some way, can identify with her.” Mould said describing her series. “Secondly, its keeps the viewers’ attention on the feelings often experienced through depression, like emptiness, vacantness and not recognizing oneself anymore.”
This quote is an exact description of how I feel. it describes the feeling of isolation from yourself and detached from who you're supposed to be. The images show a person who feels detached from their body, as if their body is just a vessel carrying them around.
This image is titled Withering Away. It shows a trunk / suitcase with a shoe inside, a dress draped over and 4 vintage family photos to the left. Legs stick out from under the dress despite no other limbs showing and the dress clearly not inhabited by a body. This shows traces of a person, there's memory and history and belongings, there's a sense of style, pets, family, but there's still no solid identity. There's the feeling of the loss of the self, the detachment from all of these elements that make a person who they are.
It's as if there's an echo of identity but it's gotten lost within the person, in this case, Janelia Mould.
The fact that there's one shoe on the foot and one in the trunk reflects how nothing is perfect, and creates a question for an audience to ponder on - why is it this way? How did one shoe get in the trunk? Is somebody dressing the feet?
Perhaps it resembles the remnants of the woman being packed away, starting with that shoe. Her memory is being collected into one just to be shut away, trapping the essence of her that she doesn't believe she connects with anymore.
To the right of the trunk you can see a couple of roses places there, as if marking her passing - the death of the self.
This image again shows entrapment and suffering. her feet are tangled by nature and she is stuck within her environment. Her hands grip on to her mattress in fear as she is entangled and taken. Branches grow over her mattress, signifying nature claiming her for its own.
Her legs could have been tied on the ground but instead her legs are raised in a rather promiscuous way that makes the image even more uncomfortable. She has no means to defend herself from whatever could come next, sexual or not. Her silky pink dress represents her femininity but also further emphasises this feeling of provocativeness.
The discomfort within this image falls a lot on the bugs that stand facing her. A large beetle and spider seem to be looking at her. It's one thing to embrace these bugs at will but when you have no choice to be near them or not, and you're tied up and restrained, this is a horrible experience for most. I feel this deeply out of a lifelong phobia of spiders, so I especially feel uncomfortable by this.
The background shows isolation with nobody else to be seen. The clouds are stormy and there's rocky rubble. All of this portrays a story of loneliness, feeling lost and, feeling entrapped and the concept of everything feeling destroyed with nothing to cherish left.
Overall, these images reflect the affects of mental illness in a way that is beautiful but uncomfortable at the same time. Visually, they're beautiful and very nice to look at. The colours all come together to create something that you want to keep looking at and therefore inspect, and it's upon this inspection when the discomfort and loneliness and emptiness and the entanglement with mental illness makes itself clear.
This artist creates images with a style that is rather different to what I have been practising, and is more along the lines of Monica Lazăr in terms of the fantasy feel which has underlying dark themes that are perhaps not so obvious upon the first look.
While at this point in my project I doubt i'll use this style as an influence on my work, however I think it's important for me to understand how others explore their minds with photography and self-portraits.
The series is a complication of images of young women that represent her, but each one has their faces erased, as if it's invisible. She explains this by saying;
“The character in this series has no face and sometimes has missing limbs, firstly, so that anybody that either suffers from depression or has dealt with it in some way, can identify with her.” Mould said describing her series. “Secondly, its keeps the viewers’ attention on the feelings often experienced through depression, like emptiness, vacantness and not recognizing oneself anymore.”
This quote is an exact description of how I feel. it describes the feeling of isolation from yourself and detached from who you're supposed to be. The images show a person who feels detached from their body, as if their body is just a vessel carrying them around.
This image is titled Withering Away. It shows a trunk / suitcase with a shoe inside, a dress draped over and 4 vintage family photos to the left. Legs stick out from under the dress despite no other limbs showing and the dress clearly not inhabited by a body. This shows traces of a person, there's memory and history and belongings, there's a sense of style, pets, family, but there's still no solid identity. There's the feeling of the loss of the self, the detachment from all of these elements that make a person who they are.
It's as if there's an echo of identity but it's gotten lost within the person, in this case, Janelia Mould.
The fact that there's one shoe on the foot and one in the trunk reflects how nothing is perfect, and creates a question for an audience to ponder on - why is it this way? How did one shoe get in the trunk? Is somebody dressing the feet?
Perhaps it resembles the remnants of the woman being packed away, starting with that shoe. Her memory is being collected into one just to be shut away, trapping the essence of her that she doesn't believe she connects with anymore.
To the right of the trunk you can see a couple of roses places there, as if marking her passing - the death of the self.
This image again shows entrapment and suffering. her feet are tangled by nature and she is stuck within her environment. Her hands grip on to her mattress in fear as she is entangled and taken. Branches grow over her mattress, signifying nature claiming her for its own.
Her legs could have been tied on the ground but instead her legs are raised in a rather promiscuous way that makes the image even more uncomfortable. She has no means to defend herself from whatever could come next, sexual or not. Her silky pink dress represents her femininity but also further emphasises this feeling of provocativeness.
The discomfort within this image falls a lot on the bugs that stand facing her. A large beetle and spider seem to be looking at her. It's one thing to embrace these bugs at will but when you have no choice to be near them or not, and you're tied up and restrained, this is a horrible experience for most. I feel this deeply out of a lifelong phobia of spiders, so I especially feel uncomfortable by this.
The background shows isolation with nobody else to be seen. The clouds are stormy and there's rocky rubble. All of this portrays a story of loneliness, feeling lost and, feeling entrapped and the concept of everything feeling destroyed with nothing to cherish left.
Overall, these images reflect the affects of mental illness in a way that is beautiful but uncomfortable at the same time. Visually, they're beautiful and very nice to look at. The colours all come together to create something that you want to keep looking at and therefore inspect, and it's upon this inspection when the discomfort and loneliness and emptiness and the entanglement with mental illness makes itself clear.
This artist creates images with a style that is rather different to what I have been practising, and is more along the lines of Monica Lazăr in terms of the fantasy feel which has underlying dark themes that are perhaps not so obvious upon the first look.
While at this point in my project I doubt i'll use this style as an influence on my work, however I think it's important for me to understand how others explore their minds with photography and self-portraits.
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