IBID. [what had gone before] (2015-17)
"Through the Lens: A Psychoanalytic Journey in Self-Portraiture”
This photographic project explores a deeply personal and experimental approach to self-exploration through the medium of self-portraiture. Drawing from psychoanalytic traditions and inspired by Sigmund Freud’s concept of “Pathography”—the psychological study of an artist through their creative work—this Phd research project proposes a contemporary method of self-representation that seeks authenticity, psychological insight, and emotional restoration.
Over the course of two years, I created a series of photographic self-portraits, each emerging from dialogue between image and interpretation. For each photograph, I collaborated with two psychoanalytic psychotherapists who responded with written analyses of the images I presented to them. These interpretations then informed the creation of subsequent portraits, resulting in a process of reflection, response, and renewal.
This iterative, collaborative method allowed a unique interplay between visual expression and psychoanalytic critique, revealing patterns and psychological themes as they surfaced over time. The resulting body of work—twenty-four images made at monthly intervals—traces not only a personal journey but also an evolving exploration of the role of photography as a therapeutic and transformative practice.
By combining the visual language of photography with the introspective tools of psychoanalysis, this project contributes to the growing field of phototherapy. It invites viewers to consider how self-portraiture can serve as a site for healing, insight, and deeper artistic authenticity.
"His experiences as a baby are buried deep and distant. Although well cared for—happy and even charmed—he is lost in his own little world, remote from reality. Within this isolation, we might see the fragility of him as the child who should be carefree, but there is something missing."
"Where are those missing bits that are needed, to know himself, or do their absence say much more? Wether without a face, or over interpreted, over seen as a 'faceless' face, suggests there was perhaps no identity, a blur between past and present. Or as different aspects of the ‘self'. As if going back in time to some of the echoes of earlier times although he doesn't actually know what the story is. Does he really want to go back there, to that memory?"
"He passively sits in this silence and waits. In this bleak place their is an inevitability that emphasises feelings of inaccessibility and an impossibility in making a connection. A place of both being not heard or communicated with. A certain experience silence, by being left unseen. Or is he just unreachable?"
