Throughout the term my project of Self Harming has changed quite a lot. I was first researching into Mental Illness and what Mental Illness includes, I then started by getting an understanding that Self Harming was under the Mental Illness category and my focus then lead me to Self Harming. My first thing with Self Harming was looking at photographers who portrayed Self Harming in their photography work such as Larry Clark who's work was true to life about Self Harming. I thought I want my work to be like this gritty and showing the knife or razor which my victim would Self Harm with.
But that all changed once I realised that my house mate suffered from Self Harming and she spoke openly to me in an interview and told me everything about Self Harming and that it was not just the knife or razor that would hurt but everything would hurt, it would be names that was being thrown at her and what she felt about herself, so I researched into Plastic Surgery and found out that a lot of people want to change things about themselves and they harm themselves because they cannot change themselves (which is horrible to think of because everyone is beautiful in their own way). I did not want to get side track with Plastic Surgery so I just focused on Self Harming.
After realising that my house mate went through such an awful time, I then started adapting things from her interview and trying to make them come to life within a photograph, I tired using a knife and objects which you could visually see scars of but it just was not working for me. I then had the idea of mirror image and the photographer Tom Hussey really made me think twice about mirror image it was excellent the way he was portraying memory loss and I thought I could do it from a Self Harming perspective.
Throughout the interview with my house mate she would always say how no one knew she was Self Harming, she would do it in private and then act as if everything was okay, she would not tell anyone because of other problems so she suffered in silent for a long time, but that gave me the idea for my project in the sense of mirror image what the victim sees and mirror image what others see, and that is what has come to be with my final images.
This project of Mental Illness/Self Harming has really made me realise that Self Harming is a problem and that more needs to be talked about it. Throughout my project and with my Project Proposal things have changed and I believe for the best, because before hand I thought Self Harming was about knifes and razor blades and bleeding and yes of course it is in some cases but in other cases it is not. I have learnt throughout my research that Self Harming victims will do anything to harm themselves until they get help ... Thank god my friend did and she is living and excellent, healthy, fun filled life.
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