An internal battlefield of becoming —a boy striving to grow into a man without a guide, armed only with inherited expectations and the myths of bravery. Rooted in personal narrative, A Brave Little Soldier is a meditation on the cycles of conflict we inherit, perpetuate, and internalize.
Told as an allegory, the series examines the boy’s journey through imagined battles, where he assembles a regiment of defenders to fight for justice, for right over wrong. Yet, as the battles escalate, the boy finds himself trapped in a war of his own making. The enemy becomes indistinguishable from the self. Each conflict leaves scars—sacrifices that cannot be undone. What begins as a heroic quest unravels into chaos, as the boy fights not for survival but against himself.
These images reflect the psychological terrain of unresolved conflict: the war between identity and expectation, love and fear, creation and destruction. Drawing inspiration from psychoanalytic theory, the work investigates the fixation on past traumas, inherited patterns, and the unconscious motivations that shape who we are. At its heart lies the question: What happens when the battles we fight are not our own?
The battlefield becomes a metaphor for the psyche. The war, an epidemic of madness, is self-perpetuating—a reflection of the unresolved conflicts passed down through generations. By illuminating the inner war, I aim to explore the quiet, often unseen struggle of self-definition. The boy’s story reveals that survival is not just about bravery in the face of conflict but about the courage to imagine a resolution beyond it.
To anyone navigating the shadowlands of identity and inheritance—those who have fought battles within themselves and sought peace in the wreckage. Through self-reflection and the act of making, these photographs are an attempt to shed light on the darkness, to find meaning amidst the chaos, and to acknowledge the boy within us all who must face himself to become whole.