‘Just snap out of it’, ‘it’s just your imagination’, ‘you’re not trying hard enough’, or ‘can you make an effort for the rest of us’. These are conversations that no one would have with a person who’s fighting cancer or has broken their legs; but, to the victims of mental illness, conversations like these are what they encounter daily. Visibility is, indeed, one of the main reasons as someone’s physical pain can be seen but not the turmoil in someone’s mind, resulting in ignorance, stigmas, and discrimination toward mental illness and its victims.
Growing up witnessing my friends and family members battling with invisible illnesses behind closed doors with their efforts denied, with people calling them incompetent and selfish, and as someone who is also fighting to heal from anxiety and depression, speaking our truth, and shedding light on what we’re fighting for daily is extremely crucial for me. This photography series: Visualize Mental Illness, therefore, is my effort to justify how mental illness is as torturous, and painful as physical illness and so requires the same attention and respect.
To make visible the invisible pain and challenge the stigmas forced upon mental illness victims, I chose to do research and interview victims of 6 kinds of mental illness: Schizophrenia, Depression, Anxiety, Eating Disorder, Bipolar, and PTSD then capture their untold stories and suppressed feelings written in red marker on a semi-naked body or the living environment in a series of 6 photos. Although the series is conceptual rather than a documentary as the interviewed people I know personally can’t be present for the photo shoot, I hope to still use symbols to deliver the core message. That is by including the naked body, symbolizing vulnerability, the red color, symbolizing blood and pain, and the victim’s daily eerie living environment, I hope to expose the unseen and painful battle within the mind of people who are affected by these invisible illnesses.
