No Longer Human

I have explored my disconnect from humankind following sexual trauma, inspired by personal experiences and Osamu Daza’s book, No Longer Human (Dazai, 1958). I illustrated this concept by using a combination of analogue and digital techniques to map the journey to recentre my mind in the present time through abstract shots of landscapes. I have reduced these landscapes to their most basic form and then reconstructed them into abnormal and outlandish versions to represent my neurosis of feeling abnormal in society due to the taboo nature of sexual trauma.  Bessel van der Kolk, a researcher in post-traumatic stress, states that traumatised people feel chronically unsafe within themselves; the past continues to survive internally as internal discomfort (Kolk, 2015). Many people escape this inner turmoil through dissociation, a common symptom of PTSD, which leaves them feeling out of sync with the world. Traversing the incongruousness that comes with surviving trauma and existing in the limbo state between the past and present; I have created images that illustrate overcoming this severance between the self and society by finding a connection to nature when the social aspects of our world feel alien and unsafe. Inspired by Richard Mosse’s Infra: Photographs (Mosse and Hochschild, 2012), I have illustrated this connection through vivid images of mountainous and wild landscapes that demonstrate this alienation from humankind. I used medium format film to slow down the photographic process to echo the strenuous process of recovering from trauma and learning to live in a new version of reality that looks the same but feels different and dangerous.