Kolkata, India- 2017. Glow – Love/ The way of its presence/ Or devouring the mind/ At the strangest, when /Uncertainty deserts you /This is love/ An untamed spectrum/ In its beauty, a flower/ Let it outlive you.
Mental Illness, photo essay by Ritam Talukdar
We as human beings are never complete even if all of our feelings are seen to be. Within each of us there lies a small portion of unsatisfactory statement that slowly over the passing time, turns onto us, even if we try to be significant we find some part of it to be missing. This feeling of “lack of being” kind of acted as a strange phenomenon, in which people like me lie submerged.
After being diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder and Depression, I felt that I started to worry about everyday life events without any particular reasons and I always expected disasters to happen no matter how soothing the situations were. I started talking on my own and felt the burden of stress along with palpitation and chronic nervousness wherever I went. There was a strange euphoric rush regarding the feeling of always being left alone, which was becoming hard to control. At that time I realized that this is not a general feeling, but a condition faced by most of the people now days. I decided to document it.
Beauty – Observing the beauty in the middle of the night. Trust has always been a big factor for everyone, specially for the ones who have never experienced the universal feeling of unconditional love. Its a rare gift.
Kolkata, India-2017-Title-“Existence”–My mother is the only person who have supported me all long in my life. She is my best friend with whom I can share my deepest darkest secrets about being a failure in my life.
No head – When I was young, I lost my head. In my adolescence i smoked it up. When I realized i already disoriented my brain and now i can’t find my brain. if anyone could have helped me in remembering the uncalled memories from the extinct oblivion. Sometimes the disoriented mind seems to be lost with considerable confusion. A subjective feeling when a person has anxiety.
Nightmares – There can be a number of psychological triggers that cause nightmares. For example if you are suffering from anxiety and depression it can cause adult nightmares. Post traumatic stress disorder can also cause people to experience chronic, recurrent nightmares which can also be caused by sleep disorders. It can generally be termed as a dream occurring during Rapid Eye Movement sleep that results in feelings of strong terror, fear and distress or extreme anxiety. This phenomenon generally occurs at the end of the night and the sleeper is likely to recall the content of the dream. Spiders weave a web which is an intricate and beautiful trap to catch its prey. As such spiders can be manipulative and if seen in a dream it can indicate that the dreamer is being manipulated or the dreamer is the manipulator. It can also make you feel that you are like an outsider in some situation. Or perhaps you might want to keep your distance away from an alluring or tempting situation.
Thirsty – Taking a break on my left over existence,submerged inside the lifeless consciousness. I have become a scavenger, waiting for the death to appear and take me for a wild ride.
Till now I have always looked for ways to express myself through the photographs that I try to take. I believe this strange phenomenon of mine as a gift through which I am able to send messages in a sort of thought provocative way, that I am not the only one out there. People like us exist and this is a common scenario, currently faced by a lot of people.
This is merely a subjective approach of mine towards a project that I have been doing for quite a long time. I am merely showing the situation of my mind at this moment through the plethora of caliginous feelings. These are all how I see my surroundings and the nature when I am down with anxiety attacks. I am searching for the eternal euphoria amidst all these construed illusions of the habitat existing between me and my feelings.
Expressing all of these through a series of photographs kind of makes me feel happy but momentarily. (by Ritam Talukdar)
Forgetting faces“–Prosopagnosia or face blindness is a disorder that makes you unable to recognise the faces of certain people. They rely on certain non facial information like voice, hair color. And here I am relying on events to recognise people. It’s been quite a long time that I haven’t been social with a lot of people. Social anxiety disorders and depression can ensue for prosopagnosics because this disorder has an impact on the patient’s interaction with the society. And I am slowly floating towards that way.
Illusion – Even when the bed is full of nails we all dream to be covered with roses. It’s a dream state of mind showing its brightest possibilities in the form of an illusion as how life is when we have a dream. We have forgot to visualise and that is the most beautiful strength of a single individual if he or she has the strength to see the future that lay ahead of him or her before the prearranged set of mind. It’s the thing that makes them different and sometimes we learn from them to expect. We all learn as we proceed in to a time zone crossing various barriers of depression that rules within us just like art itself speaks the truth in its brightest hues and answers the question here and now.
Killing me slowly – The depth of the Red death in my dreams!
Disturbance – There are no halt signs and no comfort in what I have been experiencing.
A knock at your window – When the shadows instead of haunting you becomes your best friend.
[b. 1988] This is Ritam Talukdar a freelance photojournalist and a story teller who likes to tell stories through visual narratives. I practically believe… More »
