How often do you really share what’s on your mind? This is an ongoing collaboration of inviting people whom I photograph to use their portraits to reveal their innermost thoughts. The result is a snapshot of our human struggle with mental well-being.
How often do you really share what’s on your mind? This is an ongoing collaboration of inviting people whom I photograph to use their portraits to reveal their innermost thoughts. The result is a snapshot of our human struggle with mental well-being.
You have to find one way or another to express yourself. Like music or writing words, or drawing. Drawing is one way.
Depends how your mind functions and which aspect is stronger. That’s what I learned after my surgery – creativeness.
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I see myself as a colorful person and I have a future in front of me and also I want other people to know about it. I want to show that being labelled as disabled does not mean that I am not able to do things that everybody can do. I want to show that. I want to prove that.
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The most important thing for me is health – can’t do without health. It’s definitely taken for granted that health is there. It’s not always the case. - Jeffy
Said ‘it’s only up to you’
And that’s the hardest pill to swallow.
You never get to choose
You live on what they sent you
And you know they’re gonna use
The things you love against you
I could learn to play the game
I could learn to run the hustle
If I only had the brains
The money or the muscle
– Extract from ‘Falling Awake’ by Gary Jules
I’ve spent a lot of time sailing and being out in the water is quite a nice place to go out and realize how small and insignificant you are in the world.
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There is the waves, as the additions to the face. There is the scales and there is the dragon at the top. One of the parts of me that I’m most confident about is my eyes. I like the whole stormy blue of stormy seas. It’s a bit of a nod to the acknowledged narcissistic tendencies, of which there are many.
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The scales are the biggest representative symbol. It’s weighing up how much pain would you get from doing this thing versus how much you would get in the long run. It’s an uncomfortable set of scales to be holding and if I could drop them, I would.
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I am not one for labels, as with mental issues, they are so unique to the individual it is difficult to have a name for a thing. Depression to one person means something else to another, so it is a ridiculous label. But I’ve had issues with that kind of stuff, with anger stuff, with… I am a bottler, I bottle things.
I have violent thoughts quite a lot of the time, but I would never act on them. The way I have gone through life and as a result of childhood stuff, home life is never as simple as it sounds.
Most people react emotionally to stimuli and then think about it logically. I am the opposite. I logic things through how I feel about that based on it’s pros and cons, then I react to how I have deduced I feel about it.
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I would be lying if I said I am a fundamentally happy person. I am a pessimist and I don’t like it. - Andrew