Brilio.net/en - Edward Honaker is a young American photograph originally from San Diego. He found out a few years ago that he was suffering from depression. From that moment on, he realized what was going on around him and how difficult it was to express with words how he was feeling.
Your spirit represents what you are, and when it doesnt work correctly, its scary to see what it looks like, he says. Always being the creative-type, he started to take pictures of himself. He explained that he wanted to understand his disease, what it represents and what it concretely looked like. The pictures then became a way to create, to express and above all, a more efficient communication form than speaking.
It is often advised to people suffering from depression to find a way to exteriorise their fear and angst through different aspects. Besides medicine, there are a lot of alternatives to get out the disease, its just often a long path and in Edwards case, its been through photography.
His series of disturbing photographs illustrate his personal experimentation of depression along with the feelings this latter brings along, anxiety, an uncomfortable sensation the artist had to deal with every day. Imagining the different portraits was a work of self-analysis, a real introspection not easy for one to do, even for those not suffering of depression actually.
It is not necessary to suffer from depression to be touched by Honalers talent. Anyone could find himself in at least one of those portrait. Beyond the esthetical aspect, the images inspire a reflexion about, on the one hand, how it feels to be itself in this situation, and on the other hand, what it looks like from an external perspective.
Not only Edward Honaker says he is now cured but he gains popularity and speaks out now to help the people suffering of the same disease. Nobody can know exactly how the other suffers, and this is also the message he wanted to spread through its work.
Image source: Edward Honaker
(brl/red)
