Solace: The Light in the Dark
Introduction:
Solace, my latest collection, is based on the premise that there is always a silver lining, that there is order to the chaos, and that there is beauty in the pain.
Conceptually, this collection comes from my personal struggles in life and most importantly how I respond to them. When life gets hard, as it most assuredly will, I grab my camera and try to find the beauty in the world, even when I am blinded by the darkness. This album is a collection of photos, but also a collection of feelings. Solace is the amalgam of all my fallen tears, anxious thoughts, depressive episodes, but also every breakthrough, my relentless passion, and the bottomless serenity I’ve found through it all. Solace is misery incarnate, gilded with hope.
Themes and Composition:
Solace is comprised of melancholic black and white photos featuring objects, scenes, wildlife and myself with somber tones which are contrasted with superimposed embellishments of glitter I mixed together and photographed. Each photo is composed and manipulated to reveal a feeling antithetic to the shimmering textures of the focal point. In each photo from Solace you can find the dark and the light coexisting and symbiotically enhancing each other to evoke sensations of loss, hope, pain, wonder, and serenity.
The photos that comprise Solace are not in a vacuum, they are individual pieces of a larger picture. They are the story of finding strength, purpose, and passion in the darkest hours; and by extension, they are my story.
The Story:
Act I: The Depths
Dysphoria takes place in the bottomless pit of suffering, when the faint glint of hope is rapidly fading. It is the moment when we are forced to sit with ourselves and our demons. We face a turning point; break bread with the past, with ourselves, and with our pain; or we give in and give up. Dysphoria represents the choice being made to face ourselves and to get back up on our feet.
Temptation is the embodiment of the easy way out, it is the glistening allure of our intrusive thoughts. As we make the choice to face reality and all the pain that it entails, Temptation is the darkest parts of us telling us to give up. It is the false promises of bliss that try to divert us from moving forward.
Impermanence is the rendering of why all of this matters. It symbolizes the reason why we can find beauty in things. Things aren’t beautiful because they last forever, they are beautiful because they don’t. Impermanence represents seizing the time that we have left and finding meaning and purpose in the ephemerality of life. To feel sorrow means that we once felt joy and that we can feel it again. Impermanence holds the good with the bad because they are intrinsic parts of the beauty of life.
Act II: The Climb
Remnant is the idea of how we want to be remembered, Remnant is our legacy. Giving up freezes us in our pain for the rest of time, picking ourselves back up, however hard as it may be, gives us another chance to feel again. Remnant is the mastery of impermanence and realizing that the time we have is a gift. The pain of life is transient and so too is the bliss, but both are required to experience all that life has to offer.
Kintsugi honors its namesake, by representing the realization that all of the pain we endured has galvanized us. We were made whole by our broken parts. Kintsugi is the culmination of all the things we wish never happened but that we can’t regret because they made us who we are. It transmutes all of our pain and suffering into experience and wisdom. Kintsugi takes the cracks that almost broke us and makes us better for it.
Ignition represents what happens when we have found strength where we once saw weakness. After we have been forged by pain, we can find passion and inspiration from life. We have been made stronger by life’s trial-by-fire and have made it out the other side victorious. Ignition represents the struggles that formed us, and the infinite burning passion that we once considered impossible. The flames that nearly consumed us now powers our will.
Act III: The Summit
Confluence finds beauty in places we hadn’t seen it before. The song of birds in the morning, the vibrance of flowers, the crash of the waves. Confluence is the manifestation of taking in the majesty of the world all around us. It is the newfound ability to see outside of ourselves, to see the world we once hated as it truly is: stunning. We have journeyed through ourselves and finally escaped the internal prison we once locked ourselves in.
Revelation is the slow burn of self-discovery that in a single moment condenses into an overarching purpose. After surviving the darkest hours and finding ourselves, we get a realization of what we were made for. Revelation embodies the pivotal moment when we can see our destiny unfolding before us, and we instantly understand why we struggled so much for so long; it was to get to this moment and we realize it was worth it.
Ascension is dancing like nobody’s watching. It’s the feeling of infinite possibilities. After we know who we are and what we were made for, we arrive at a place with almost magical qualities. We arrive at ourselves. Ascension is our true selves now unburdened by the pain we once bore. We were perfect all along, we just needed to be able to see ourselves truthfully. Ascension is the end of our journey through suffering, and the beginning of everything yet to come.