Photography:
Edward Honaker
Photographer Edward Honaker, was diagnosed with a mood disorder at the age of 19. He was experiencing a persistent feeling of sadness, creating an overwhelming obstacle in his day-to-day life.
To convey his inner thoughts and feelings, Edward turned to his camera and tried to combat his depression and anxiety via his Photography. He documented his personal experiences with a surreal series of black and white harrowing self-portraits.
The photographs portray the helplessness felt by someone who is battling a depressive disorder. Edward’s face is blurred or covered in all of the black and white photos, a powerful symbolism of his feelings of suffocation and drowning.
Each black-and-white image is as artistic as it is revealing, turning his depression into something that can be seen and better understood. Edward said, “It’s kind of hard to feel any kind of emotion when you’re depressed, and good art can definitely move people”.
Distortion and immersion in water are common themes in his work, as well as a literal loss of face. Edwards portfolio acts as a beacon of empathy, and we can learn a lot from his creative’s tellings.
Tsoku Maela
Tsoku Maela is a photographer that creates images meant to demonstrate an artists’ battle with depression. The scenes constructed in his body of work, “Abstract Peaces,” focus on portraits that have increasingly surreal qualities. Maela is either seen engaging with a prop, whether that be a rose or a paintbrush, or is digitally altered in some way in hopes of more accurately catching the essence of what it is like to live with depression. The product, no matter the intensity of Maela’s photographic transformation, shows depression as something that is physically consuming and ever-present though potentially invisible to the everyday eye.
In this way, photography is the ideal tool to use while traversing through such a distinct, sensitive subject matter. To make the invisible illness visible is powerful, as is transferring the feelings and experiences of one to another. But this is what an artist like Maela achieves when the camera and all it affords is available to him. The strong desire to change the way mental health is viewed is further reinforced by Maela’s participation in black communities which, like many, sweep these conversations under the rug without a second glance. This reality drives the photographer to offer his interpretation of a condition that is known by many though only understood by some.
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