How to Disappear Completely
How can I disappear completely?
Is this possible? My recent practice has been completely uninspired because I was looking and forcing so much inspiration. I have been attempting for so long to make work exactly like Soth because I admire so much how he works and the incredible work he produces. I wanted to get into large format photography and do everything exactly like he does. This was the first thing I was doing completely incorrectly.
After having failed over and over again I took a step back and tried to look at my practice since I started photography to try and understand where I went wrong. I've struggled with the medium, how others perceive me, how I perceive myself, and how terrible I've felt since I started taking photographs and specifically since I decided to switch into photography.
When I started I was dating the best person I've ever dated and i was overall just incredibly down-to-earth and content with the state of my life. I was studying design and exploring all kinds of different mediums. I was very content with my spiritual practice and comfortable with myself. I was very happy with design because I realized that I didn’t care what other people thought and I was so happy with the simplicity of my life.
Shortly after Nisha left I got really into photography and began to make some interesting decisions. I then completed Metanoia and was very content with the incredibly strange exploration I had embarked on. This project also introduced me to Alex and we were then able to complete a very compelling project together, which also I was very proud of.
The term-break after completing my first photo class was devastating. I fell into a creative rut and I couldn't make anything compelling from photography to my design work. This continued into my darkroom class and I was so worried.
My first idea this semester had to do with being astonished by the landscape here in Singapore and how different it is from anything I've seen in the past. I also think I somewhat enjoy the brainless activity of landscape photography- that is to photograph something that is beautiful simply because it is beautiful. The project that I developed had to do with the idea that we as humans perceive things around us as projections of ourselves rather than what they truly are. The image that led me to this realization was the cracked bridge and the overflowed sewage system. I took my mentors advice and set out to find the Shrine of Synonan Jinja deep in MacRitchie reservoir. I made many images but a day after the trip felt very let down by what I had captured. I felt all of this before having seen a single image. There was, however, one image left in my camera that I made at the very end that I was looking forward to seeing. This image led me to abandon that idea and start another.
The last image I made was of a tree that had a very compelling checkerboard like sign on it that was lacking a label or anything that would allow me to trace the origins of it back. That made me want to investigate the sign and find some human-connection to it. I wanted to find it's connection and use that as my next step for the project. Moving from the sign to its connection, then from that connection to the next connection. I wanted to find people to photograph, enter their homes and environments and make a project just like Soth's Sleeping by the Mississippi but, as I would soon discover, that is just not me, and it is very hard to generate an organic portraiture project here in Singapore. I went out to make these connections numerous times and failed and was rejected by numerous people. All of this, along with a constant dissatisfaction with my practice culminated into an intense burnout that left me lying depressed on the floor of my studio.
This burnout and depression has actualized itself in so many different ways and I've realized and learned many different things from it. (1) After talking to my roommate back home I realized that I need the ability to drop my practice and abandon it for as long as I might need. I constantly get into new things that inspire me and I beat these practices to death before I need to drop it and move on or back to another practice. (2) I've realized that a few decisions in my practice has led me down a road that I don't really enjoy all that much. I truly do love film photography but I think it poisons my mind and gives me a superiority complex. It really ruins the entire medium of photography and I need to step back from it. The same goes with color. I love color photography but I think I need to step back into black and white to be a bit more comfortable. (2) I talked with a classmate for a while about my practice thus far in the semester and, after looking back at my past work, he suggested something that I honestly hadn't considered: that I return simply to what I know- to what I've done in the past.
With all of this in mind I've decided to return to what I know (self-portraiture and black and white photography) in the digital medium (at least for now) and prioritize myself and my mental health. All of these struggles has made me realize that what I really want in life right now is to let go. I want to let go of photography, I want to let go of my expectations for the semester and let go of my care for what others think of my work and such. All in all I want to let go and disappear. Completely.
I am planning to pick up a technique and concept I started last semester and use long exposure and flash to photography the process of myself letting go. I like this concept because it allows me to essentially do double-exposures in the same setting just positioning myself in different areas in the frame in different ways. I will use this technique to move beyond the restrictions of capturing a single moment in time and morph that into multiple moments. I will use this technique to explore myself in these scenes and integrate myself or loose myself in these landscapes.
Specifically I want to use the natural landscape here in Singapore to loose myself. I want to let go and begin to de-structure, dissipate, blending, and become one with the landscape as a sense of loosing the self, the identity, the connection I have with myself and the landscape until it is simply a landscape and there is no more me ing the pictures.
One of the studies I've made is of me walking naked into the landscape. As of now an image of this will come early in the sequence and represent a type of surrender and acceptance but still a separation from me and the environment.
I have a few images in my head that I have yet to make.
I want to make a diptych that are a bit more macro that show (1) my hands releasing from a branch in the same long exposure and flash manner. This will use the multiple setting on my flash as I let go of the branch. It will therefore render my hands moving down from the branch (it might look like they’re moving up to the branch as well) and (2) the bottom will be my feel hitting the ground. I think this diptych will make for an interesting and very representational part of the project also sequenced towards the bottom of the project. I think this may be a stretch and I may need to remove these images if they feel like they don’t fit.
I want to make another kinda macro shot of my face moving quickly around the environment looking around and not really taking everything in. I think I will try it twice - one without flash just to capture the quick movement in a blurred manner and another with flash that freezes my face in different positions looking around. I see this a possibly both images being included - on that shows I cant focus on anything and the other that shows the ability to focus.
Images that show me exploring - simple and specifically in different parts of the frame looking around and exploring.
Jumping from rocks or branches multiple flashes.
Find a compelling scene and use flash to show different parts of my body de-structuring and used in the different parts dispersed in the environment. I want my body to slowly be less a part of the images until eventually my body is not a part of the environment.
I don’t really want the landscapes to be all that special. I don’t really want to make incredibly beautiful images and I don’t think I need to focus on only beautiful landscapes. I think I want to let go of making objectively beautiful images and just focus on accepting and letting go and integrating with any old non-special landscape. I kinda want to make bad images and make it about mundanity and returning to the simplicity I experienced before my photography endeavor.
Maybe make the de-structuring intentional? Can I make images that look like Im taking a body part of myself and attaching it to different parts of the landscape? The idea of wanting to be broken then putting myself back together into the landscape.
I also had an idea about tumbling down a hill. I think this would be hard to achieve but could make for a compelling mini-series inside of the larger body of work. The concept has to do with tumbling down a hill and being super tense and unaccepting of the situation and the body getting very beat-up and scratched as a result. The body would eventually begin to relax and accept the situation and they become very beautiful and relaxed images.
Inspiration:
Alec Soth's Broken Manual - not a heavy inspiration because of the images but because of the ideas represented in his images
Francesca Woodman's Self-Portraits
Trent Parke's portrait and use of long-exposure and flash
