The Silent Enemy Of Anxiety Captured In Photographs

Photography captures the fleeting moments of life, our feelings, and the space we inhabit. It is more than a technique to preserve time: it is a bridge that connects complex realities, a multitude of worlds that can be shown through only one picture.

Anxiety is born across many realities and thrives in the lives of thousands if not millions of people in this world. Every day situations can spark this silent enemy, from speaking in public, talking over the phone, going to a party, to working and even seeing objects placed out of order. The mind often plays tricks on those who suffer from this disorder, and everyone reacts differently to them.
Some people believe it can be cured, while others maintain it can only be controlled; in either case, it needs to be treated with therapy and medicine.
Those who have never been touched by this insidious monster may find it hard to understand or emphatize with the struggles and afflictions, but these photographers have decided to venture into this dark reality and show those suffering that they’re not alone.

Photographer Katie Joy Crawford created the series My Anxious Heart to address her own fight against anxiety. She has referred to her project as a journey through which she has gained knowledge, challenged herself, and changed for the better.

“My Anxious Heart explores and identifies how emotionally and physically depleting general anxiety disorder can be from a personal perspective. As I have carried anxiety for the majority of my life, I’ve chosen to depict this battle and its constant presence through photographs. Since it is within my own mind where anxiety is born, I have decided to interpret my role as both instigator and victim through self portraits,” she shares in her blog.

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Israeli photographer Rubi Lebovitch takes commonplace objects which can be found in a house to create his series Home Sweet Home. These photographs portray Freud’s concept of the Uncanny to transform a home into a place of horror.

“The scenes depicted in the photographs emphasize what usually remains hidden: the repressed, which cannot be described. The anxiety these scenes arouse undermines the peacefulness and security usually associated with the home,” he explains.

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John William Keedy is another photographer who addresses anxiety from the perspective of people who suffer from this disorder. In It’s Hardly Noticeable, he uses still life as the subject of his pictures.

“It’s Hardly Noticeable explores the world of a character who is living with an unspecified anxiety-based mental illness. (…) the series reveals the relationship between reality and perception, and highlights issues of pathology while questioning stereotypes of normalcy,” he explains on his website.