Artist Statement – Personal Spaces
This photographic project is an attempt to capture the identity and mental state of its subjects through documentation of the spaces in which they reside and how they shape them. The spaces we live in and mental health have a strong correlation. Being in a messy room can make it much harder to focus and result in overall worse mental health. Similarly, an episode of poor mental health can result in a chaotic and disorganized space. This can create a sort of cycle of despair if left unchecked. Personal spaces are also heavily influenced by our identities; they can be a museum of the things we cherish. Through this project, I wanted to explore these two aspects of our personal spaces – mental health and identity – through details of my subject’s rooms. For each subject there are four components: a portrait of the subject in their space, one image of a detail that captures how their identity has shaped their space, one image of a detail that reveals their mental state, and a written statement that describes how they have been doing mentally. The written statement was an optional element, because I did not want to force any subjects to reveal any information they felt uncomfortable sharing.
