Love Sorrow Self Portrait
“Love Sorrow Self Portrait” is a self-portrait series the photographer, Natalie Brescia, has created to reflect her experience of major depressive disorder. The pieces frequently show her in shadow, and use split bisected frames with stark black and white contrasts so experience the nature of her emotions and a fractured sense of self. There are also thread and scissor images that Brescia says evoke the Greek mythology of the Fates with the compromising position of the scissors representing the closeness of death.
The series of images does suggest a narrative thread, and could prompt discussion of how narrative can be conveyed in images. The images also prompt discussion about the experience of mental illness and the ways words may fall short of conveying it.