I chose to make this photography project for a number of reasons. It was a therapeautic process for me to relive episodes of suffering in my life and to create something from them. My photographs are a visual representation of the suffering and trauma that I have faced in the last couple years of my life. I wanted to relate a visualisation of what these events can feel like when dealing with anxiety, depression, and panic disorders. Some of the events from this time in my life are distant, foggy memories due to their traumatic nature and so I wanted to evoke the same emotions from those times while developing a narrative. I decided to include dialogue in a text format to further convey the substance of my content and stylistically, there is a movie-like feel to some of my images which I relate to the movie-like aspects of my real life. In recent years alone I have been in a dangerous car crash, was closely tied to a high school suicide, witnessed a family member experience psychosis and mania, had my life threatened, had my heart broken, stood along side my Dad as he fights cancer (now for the third time), had my love for soccer ripped apart and slowly sewn together again, and have obtained an assistance animal to help cope with my mental illnesses and enjoy life in a beautiful way. This was an empowering project in that I have yet to fully heal from all of these life events, but I was able to help further that process in analyzing meaning in memories for each photo. It has helped me remember the worst of life and helped me appreciate the best of life, and how far along I have come. Photography has been a huge help in growing as a person and I am thankful to have a medium to communicate feelings and ideas which I am unable to with words. I believe there is a way for everyone to relate to my work in that it is a raw vision of suffering and pain, something we all experience. Pain, Anxiety, and Depression are all ugly in nature and I did not want to shy away from showing ugliness in my work. I believe while certain things are difficult to look at and process, it is vital to acknowledge them for what they are. We all have authentic and personal experiences of suffering whether we like to actively think about them or not. I have found in my life experience that confronting these experiences head on has made me love myself more as a person and it has helped me be more like who I want to be.
Brendan Mulligan