Evocation of Anxiety through Space

The 'Evocation of Anxiety through Space' project was a series of photographs I composed for my final in the Media Productions studio course, CMDP 3700: Photographic Practices for the CU Boulder Media Productions major.

The task for the final photograph series was to expand on our midterm project. My midterm project was a series of photos surrounding the theme of anxiety. To fully describe the vision for my final project, I think it is important to describe the premise of my midterm.

For the midterm, I was trying to evoke the emotion of anxiety through my series of photos, but wanted to make it obvious and as clear as possible. In order to evoke this certain emotion, I had to keep a constant theme and story which was the 'anxiety of a student'. I used two different instances of how anxiety can manifest though a college student. To briefly describe the midterm, I used two different subjects to create a messy and a clean environment to show the duality of how anxiety can manifest through compulsive cleaning or unmonitored mess.

To expand on this idea for my final project instead of using subjects, I used empty environments within my own home to create the same feeling of anxiety. Rather than using subjects and their environment to create the feeling of anxiety, I manipulated light and shadows with the lack of subjects to create an uneasy or anxious emotion.

My original plan was to do a street photography shoot where I would try to capture different emotions than anxiety, but in the time that I was going to shoot my final, I became very sick with COVID.

In the midst of being isolated to a specific space, I became ridden with anxiety and the stress of not being able to leave my quarantined home. I thought it would be a great idea to use a limited space to evoke the same feeling of anxiety without subjects.

While photographing an empty space that normally would have people, I used light and shadows to manipulate the mood that a specific location would evoke. Through unconventional lighting and composition I composed three different themes of separate ways a specific space can evoke the feeling of anxiety or stress.

Firstly, I composed 8 images in color and used light and shadows in different ways than they would naturally look. The second set of 6 images I decided to edit in black and white to enhance the shadows and definition of my limited space in a separate way from my colorized set of images. Lastly, I shot 5 different images of objects within my space in a more abstract way that also produces a feeling of anxiety. Using photoshop and masking techniques I was able to create sharp images that enhance simple objects such as the leaves or bushes around my home.

Altogether, using these three different themes of color and shadow, black and white, and the abstract, I was able to fully evoke the emotion of anxiety that can be caused from limiting oneself to a specific location.