ASSAULTED BY ANXIETY
A glimpse into the mind of a seventeen year old plagued by mental illness.
Anxiety is an illness hard to understand, unless that individual has been directly affected by it's choking grasp. Photography is a medium allowing feelings to be expressed visually, without the viewer being subjected to experiencing the illness itself. I have used it to portray how I felt and express my emotions in a physical sense just as my anxiety was only discovered when it manifested physically. The feeling of anxiety is one so subtle that it often goes unnoticed by the individual until it has utterly consumed you. Derealization and depersonalisation are often experienced, as one feels as if they are outside their own body, no longer in control. Watching yourself fall helplessly into the shadows as mental illness takes your identity down with it.
These photographic works and the accompanying study on the portrayal of mental illness in art throughout history, were awarded First in New Zealand in A Level Visual Art: Photography in the 2014 Cambridge International Examinations.