It’s easier to get lost in your own insanity instead of searching for what makes sense. Many women have found pleasure in seeing an unrecognizable face in the mirror as a means of ending the desperate search for happiness. This pleasure has driven them to undo all the strings tied to their bones, rid their skin of tradition, and free the wings of their desires.
The world might find actions such as running naked, touching ourselves while looking in the mirror, or photographing the soles of our feet as nonsensical. But to some women, these fill a void like nothing else, so they give in to the madness until they lose themselves in it. For them there is nothing worse than pretending. They chose to never become who they don’t want to be, or worse, to do what someone wants them to. They exist within this lunacy, for that gave them the freedom to find their essence.
Brittany Markert’s pictures exalt the female mania. They inhabit the good days, as well as the bad. Each of their identities has been split in two as their dreams have fused into reality.
Though it seems as if these photographs capture more than two characters, the truth in these images is that they’re only showing the multiple personalities one woman must inhabit. It’s those who provide her strength and courage to know who she is. Hurting, enjoying, undressing, touching, hating, or dreaming, it’s all part of the same madness that drives her to become her best self. She may not be perfect, but she will be authentic.
Distorted space, light tricks, color apathy, and mysterious shadows create the perfect stage to capture feminine insanity. This lunacy could turn into a burden they must carry for the rest of their lives, or it could become their only method of escape. This mystery comes to life when the intensity of a crazy thought is done with extravagance and beauty, two implicit properties of the female soul.
Brittany Markert’s pictures are ruled by the sinister, yet they are handled with the kindness related to female beauty and the morbidity of a landscape that continues to shock the spectator. These portraits capture an obsession with madness, as she mixes the primitive with the contemporary. Each image demonstrates our perceptions of insanity and what has created these connections in our minds.
Isolated light, white spaces, abandoned debris, genuine panning, nostalgic curtains, and autumn leaves are the elements that create these photographs. Women give in to their mad dreams until they become lost in this exploration of skewed recollections and obsessive daydreams. Unconscious desire, voyeurism, and repressed memories come together into the project where the artist inhales sanity to exhale lunacy in each of her pictures.
You can find more of Brittany Markert and her artwork here.
Translated by María Suárez
