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We usually pick up a camera to capture a moment that will never happen again. But photography can help us understand ourselves, visualize our fears and desires, and get rid of depression.
This is the conclusion reached by the creator of the photo portal Brocken Light, Daniela Hark*. She suffered from depression for a long time, and a year after the birth of her daughter, she was diagnosed with bipolar personality disorder. Daniela changed doctors and treatment regimens, but she did not get better. “Once I literally rolled on the floor in the bathroom … But suddenly I took my phone and started filming everything around me – peeling paint on the door, reflections in the mirror. And after a couple of minutes she began to come to her senses, breathe, ”says Daniela. So photography became for her one of the ways to deal with the disease. When she felt that she was getting worse, she took a camera in her hands, due to which the trajectory of her emotions changed, the strength appeared to pull herself out of a corkscrew. And then she decided to create a website where people suffering from mental illness could publish their photographs. Portal Brocken Light: A Photography Collection (“Broken Light: Collective Photography”) formulates its mission as follows: “We want to make the lives of people suffering from mental illness better, so that they can share their work in a friendly environment – online, on live exhibitions.
Of course, a website or photographs alone cannot replace a full-fledged treatment. But this very special kind of art can help everyone understand themselves, relieve stress. Daniela is sure that the process of shooting calms her down. “For me, it doesn’t matter what the photos will be. I don’t worry about the past or the future. I’m just looking at the world through a lens. And someone analyzes their pictures – in the process of photographing, a lot of opportunities are hidden for everyone.
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- Why do we carry photos of loved ones in our wallets?
Today, almost every person has a camera in their mobile phone, many buy professional lenses or use rare ones. One way or another, in our hands is what connects us with the world around us. “When we are stressed, tired, apathetic or depressed, we want to retire, hide. The camera, on the other hand, teaches us to notice what is happening at the present moment in time, here and now, makes us sensitive to the content of the world, ”says social psychologist and author of the theory of awareness Ellen Langer (Ellen J. Langer). When photographing, we can only notice what we are ready to see, what reflects our consciousness. Susan Sontag, in her famous book on photography, writes: “Photographs show not only what is “out there,” but also what a person sees; they are not just a registration, but an assessment of the world”**. It turns out that the choice of the subject or the hero of the photo is never accidental. Therefore, considering the pictures we have taken, we can analyze our choice, figure out what exactly attracted us to this story, how it characterizes us.
Another way is to visualize the problem. One of the participants in the Brocken Light project created a series of her self-portraits in moments of severe anxiety attacks. “Instead of feeling pain, I saw it. The photograph was a kind of proof of what was going on inside.” While photography reproduces and replicates reality, it simultaneously abstracts us from it. And the pain captured in our picture ceases to be so strongly attached to us, is separated from the real us.
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- Why don’t we have photographs of deceased relatives on our walls?
It’s easy to take a photo today, it’s even easier to share it on social networks. The demonization of a particular genre of photography (for example, food in restaurants) and the irony over the number of photographers seems to be in direct proportion to the accessibility of photography. But what’s wrong with the fact that, walking around the almost spring city, we want to share our good mood with others? Someone can write a poem, someone will make an entry in a diary or just try to remember their feelings, and someone will get a camera. Just like the artist and director Man Ray does: “I photograph what I don’t want to paint with a brush, and I paint what I can’t photograph.”
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** S. Sontag “About photography” (Ad Marginem, 2013).