Why Am I Sad? A Question Answered Through Landscape
Floating in the River, Dana Stirling. 2020
Why Am I Sad? A fair enough question when all you feel is nothing inside. It’s an experience I’m unfortunately versed in - I attempted suicide at 17 and 21, most of my life being dominated by melancholy and anxiety. Responding to how I feel is one of my key motivators for this project but I wanted to do it in a different way to the classic ‘head in hands’ shot of depression. Mental health has been depicted in so many similar ways that I felt a fresh approach was needed.
Dana Stirling is a practitioner I’ve admired for a long time who does this beautifully. Her book is a personal account of her ongoing struggle with depression. It depicts an ongoing theme of isolation through contradictory colours as subjects in comparison to the wider landscape, such as a pink flamingo on a blue lake. It gives the objects anthropomorphic characteristics as if it’s the objects that are carrying emotions of their own which is really felt in her imagery, each one weaving a different story under the overarching theme of mental illness.
The perspective of her work is from an outsider looking into the world these objects inhabit like they’re being spied on from afar. It gives the impression that the outsider is seeing them for what they are in their truest form - a depiction of someone who is struggling in a world so beautiful.
The book has the feeling that it could relate to anyone and isn’t specific to Stirling’s experience despite it being a personal narrative. It’s very relatable and there isn’t a set narrative in terms of a photo essay. Each image stands on it’s own storytelling wise and you could rearrange them into any other order without affecting the plot of what’s happening. Presenting my dystopia in a similar way is of utmost importance as, despite the fact the narrator is travelling through a landscape, it shouldn’t be specified what order they’ve navigated through. Wherever they’ve gone there has been hardship and it should be presented in a way that represents an individual struggle of some kind in every image rather than an overarching struggle.
