Emotion

I am currently reading through Kirsty Mitchell’s blog, as I start working on my Unit 2 research paper, which has to be linked to my visual project, which is the main piece of work, I have to do for the course.

I am a huge fan of Kirsty’s work and have been for years. I have even tried to create something in a similar style but failed for a variety of reasons. One of which is emotion.

One of the realities of my photography is I divorce myself from emotion. Photography is something to be worked out, it is a technical challenge, it is something to be controlled. My guess is that art reflects life. I am emotional but I try to keep it locked up tight in a pressure cooker, so tight that it is hard to access and when I do it comes as outbursts, just enough to keep the pot from exploding.

It is a part of my neurodiversity, which neurodiversity I am not sure, I have many. I generally hide who I am from the world. I am generally very good as masking. Hiding who I really am under a mask, or in my case many masks.

When I am around people, I will often take on a similar persona as the person I am with, a form of mimicry. It is an act and I can play it well but I can only do it for so long because it is very exhausting.

The other state I get into is ‘hyper’ where my brain just goes into overdrive. I am funny, erudite and fast, I can crack a 100 jokes and will have the person, I am with laughing and with each laugh, my brain gets slightly faster, the jokes get slight more outlandish and over the top. This is a great mode to be in. It is everything I am not in real life and I can be in this state right up until I crash, which is not a pretty state.

Getting back to the post. I would love to create more emotional images, creating imperfection, but when I try, the technical side of my brain goes, now this is rubbish, how can I make this image look nicer? I am not suggesting my images are perfect, they are not, limited by my technical knowledge and ability but emotion is something I find very hard to show for real.

An example being the above image. As I was taking the photo, I was thinking how do I take an emotional image but at no time did I feel emotion. It was all about getting the framing wrong (on purpose and making sure I would get the catch lights (even though this photo was taken in natural light).

Last week, when I received my results from the first unit. I was extremely anxious but when I saw the results, which for the written part were far better than I could have hoped for, I didn’t feel elated. I tried to be excited, I even tried to do a excited ‘woohoo’ but it was fake, just me trying to delude myself into thinking that I was excited.

As I have said, it isn’t that I don’t have emotion, I have lots of emotions but I find very hard to let them out and when I do, it is normally when I am about to have a bit of a breakdown. In my last post, I said I was ecstatic with the 66% I received and I am but it isn’t an emotional ecstatic, more of extremely pleased because I never expected to get that result. Inside somewhere hidden, I am sure there is a party going on but I don’t feel like the rest of me was invited.

It is one of the reasons, I am single and have been for years. I find emotional relationships very hard. Particularly letting out the positive emotions. It is very hard to describe in words. The emotions are there but I am afraid to let them out for a variety of reasons.