The Monster
Throughout life I am filled with guilt In fact we all have guilt feelings. Guilty feelings about how we behaved to the children were we perhaps too harsh in some cases or maybe we made mistakes. In fact for sure we have made mistakes along the way and it is not clear how this will affect their future with the passing years. Guilt feelings towards our life Partner. From time to time we said things in the heat of the moment or just without thought and did not have to say. Things that hurt things that affected the relationship with are life partners. Things that make me and everyone sometimes look bad and inconsiderate
As I look in the mirror and look into the eyes of that figure reflected there I occasionally see a "monster" person. How dare I say or do such a thing. How could I be so inconsiderate or childish, how could I not have seen what it would do and how did I get to the point where I thought the things I said would not “work” that way. How many times while I should say the things I realize I am making a mistake. Like a monster who does not care and it does not see how it actions harm another. Now it is true that over time those bad sides in me are reduced in their frequency and with age I already know to recognize them and aware of their existence and of course try to avoid them, but still they are there and it is not that they disappear but I "learn to live with them" and that's one thing that bothers me. To say that "I learned to live with them" with this "monster" only reinforces the egoistic thought because it does not mean that those around me learned to live with it. From there, this project was born. From out of looking in the mirror, out of self-criticism and a desire to correct, to destroy this "monster" that is reflected in front of me in the mirror every day. I would so much like to stop it and create awareness for it to break it down into parts and make it disappear
At first the studio work progressed slowly. With the passing months the decor and lighting were built almost on their own. Almost without orderly thought as if they were always there and I just had to build them in the studio. The shades of the images were in my head even before I took the picture, the only thing I had to do was find the right color filter and buy them. Finally, in order to get the right color image, I worked with two color filters, an orange filter and a yellow filter that will "yellow" the intensity of the orange and lighten it a little. Together with constant lighting at low temperature the right shade is created. Apart from changes in the temperature in image editing no further image editing was done. I created the dark corners (a vignetting) with the help of corona masks that have been around for more than a year in my life. The same masks that suffocate and close on me and only intensify the monster in me, that mask is like a food that feed it and allow it to grow thanks to the suffocation, and the lack of oxygen and the difficulty of breathing both physically and mentally
In images there are two forms of "monster". The first is the gas mask which is a character who has trouble breathing. Probably because it started from a point where I felt I had trouble breathing and maybe as a need to strangle the monster that maybe if it had trouble breathing then it would suffocate and disappear from my life, disappear from me. The second "monster" is a non-shaped mask that reminiscent a specific kind of an animal but something general in fact this monster is an imaginary of a monstrous animal. The mask was created from a character I saw in a dream while working on the project. A character with a big and disproportionate head that really looks like a monster. In the third and final part of the project I decided it was time to really destroy that monster physically and not leave anything behind so it went through a process of physical destroying with my hands. Throughout the project, before the end of the "chapter", strips of paper are used, which serve as a kind of "wrapping" of the figure before "burial" or a process of packing that will allow the "monster" to be sent to it death. All the images were constructed in such a way that they could describe a process of coping and death of me and the monster within me. A process of internal struggle for its existence against the desire to kill and destroy the monster. In this process I felt that I was missing something and I was not sure what until all the photographs sat before my eyes and then I saw that what was missing was a clearer process of dealing with it, of the process of developing work in front of it and it death, in front of the negative sides. Images into a single image so that I can describe the process I go through with it but also in such a way that the viewer can see it in/as a single image (consisting of four images) the process created during the filming. From there, the white negative photos were also created (I turned the photo into black and white before turning the image into a negative in order to get a white and bright image). Negative images is a double “game” on two levels. One is that the "monster" is indeed a negative thing that I can not give it a place in my life (even though it is there non-stop) and the other level is the need to turn a "monstrous negative" into a "positive without the monster". It is way the images are white and full of light and so I was able to produce a kind of hope, of a positive precisely by creating the negative with which I "play" within the whole images which consists of the four images. Some images are repetitive or almost repetitive with minimal changes to emphasize the work process and development created during the studio work. In some cases this is created as a kind of slow motion video (like the Eadweard Muybridge horse racing series) that allows the viewer to see More clearly the progress of the "video" or in this case of this project more clearly
Surprisingly even after finishing the project I do not feel that it is completely behind me and the "monster" is still inside me. In fact the reason I stopped working on the project and did not create any more images is that I can not really resolve neither the "monster" nor the feelings of guilt and I feel it would be best to continue researching the subject in another project that might "attack" the subject from other directions.