This project was carried out through a Project-orientaded semester in my first year of Photography school, where the theme was, specifically, ADDICTION. Immediately I had a strong conviction that I wanted to avoid the directness of portraying it in a literal way. I started to write a story in my head about a persona that has been eaten up by addiction - it does not matter what kind of addiction, I didn't think it would be relevant for the objective I had in mind - and the environment that character exists in. The visual scenario had to bring up the idea of someone who wasn't very much focused on caring, nor giving away a variety of emotions, so that I could write a straight line of sadness and discomfort in the narrative I was aiming to create. Studying a bit about what other artists and writers have written or said about addiction, I understood that in a panoramic understanding we all saw it as some kind of complex, multi-layered, profound disregard for ones balance, hence The Lack of Self Perseverance is born after months of thinking and processing it.
For some time I've been dwelling around the thoughts that brought me to my early childhood memories. I live in the same house, in the same small country-like town since I can remember. When I was younger, my father used to take me to the forest, for us to run or to ride our bikes. I have the happiest. colorful, warmest memories about those feelings of adventure and freedom. Since the years have past, memory started to slip on me like a walk you're going on and suddenly all you can see has narrowed down to a few glimpses of what is and most of what you see hide behind dead angles. So in an attempt of trying to revive what was being left behind, I went on a journey to explore those same places I enjoyed so much with my father when I was younger. But this time, I didn't try to portrait what it was like then. Instead, I re-experienced them through the lens of what I perceive and understand now. Country-like as it is, the mist and the sense of uncertainty and discomfort is very present on the atmosphere and, these days, even though I can still remember the warm experiences I had, all that is left is this sense of adventure that doesn't fit the warm colors as before. There's a sense of danger, of uneasiness, of cautiousness and alert that contradict the freedom from the naiveness of before. Not only the freedom, but also the wings of protection that I felt over me.
∙everything is a forever working progress, and this is no exception - what is written and exposed here today, might not be the same over time ∙