When I am Depressed

 by Claire Rinterknecht

The absurdity of being human is that we can have the most wonderful life – go to the best university in the UK, eat fresh food every day, view sunsets over the sea – and yet we still feel deprived, depressed, distorted, living in a world that does not fit together. When I am depressed, I want desperately to rid myself of the dark shadows in my head. In these photos, I have painted that darkness on my face - physicalising the pain. In polishing my face and making it dramatic with editing, I distance the self-portrait from myself, which in turn distances my darkness. This experience alters how I see my situation because suddenly I have the power to shift perspective, simply in shifting the RGB curve angle. Because depression deprives me of any sense of control, being able to depict my feelings in photography allows me, to a certain extent, to regain control over my mood by putting my darkness right in front of my eyes, instead of hidden deep inside me. Rather than trying to detangle my thoughts and shadows for hours, curled up in a corner, I sit at my desk, distorting photos. This permits me to craft ‘perfect’ forms of myself, which I can despise even more than myself, because they are unrealistic and scary. However, no matter how all-consuming the darkness becomes, there will always, at some point, be a source of light – some moment of hope, some blissful alleviation. And those moments are what we live for, no matter how absurd humanity is the rest of the time.

ST.ART does not own the rights to any images used in this article