New project – Unseen

I’m utterly thrilled to announce that my new project ‘Unseen’ will been awarded funding by @weareunltd! I am so excited about this opportunity and really can’t wait to start!

This new project has been on my mind for over a year now. It feels like the natural progression from my last project ‘In the Mind’s Eye’.

Through ‘In the Mind’s Eye’, I wanted to visually portray my lived experience of depression and anxiety. My aim was to illustrate experiences that are, for the most part invisible, and create something tangible that others could relate to.

I didn’t even recognise what I was going through as depression at first, due to a total lack of knowledge. There is so much stigma around mental well-being that often we don’t feel comfortable talking about it and sadly, for the most part, we aren’t educated on it. A lot of the time, a lack of awareness and stigma is what stops people from getting help.

I found this approach to photography key in making sense of an otherwise incomprehensible experience. I felt empowered by it. For me it was a way of drawing a positive from the negative. This experience was profoundly important to me.

I now want to share it with others.

So in May I’m starting my new project ‘Unseen’.

The project will span 18 months.

Unseen is a photographic project that uses fine art photography to depict the experience of struggle with mental wellbeing. Mental health is ‘elastic’. We all have the potential to have our mental wellbeing stretched at times. Whether it be stresses at work or relationship problems, we all have our ‘things’. I’m seeking to illustrate these struggles in images.

I am looking for people who have experienced and overcome a struggle, who also have an idea about how they might want to represent that struggle in an image so that we have a starting point to build on.

This project is all about collaboration. I’m interested in finding people with strong ideas for images. Each subject with choose the location and concepts for the images. My role will be to enable them to create an image from their imaginings.

Over 8 months we’ll have the opportunity to experiment with ideas and work towards creating final shots that will be shown in a touring exhibition and published in an artists book.