FORMS, photo essay by Ritam Talukdar

FORMS

Confined within these spaces I have found my solace. – Kolkata, India – 2017

The state of mind has always been challenging to find new ways to explore the deepest and darkest fears that creates a boundary and restricts us to some extent, to move on. They say it’s a feeling but I say, if it’s there to stay, why not use it to document what the others are going through.

I view the world as a representation of fear, revenge, regret and loneliness. I undergo many feelings and emotions at one go. It is highly likely for a depressed person to feel happy at one point and go sad the next moment. We are all systems of a choreographed database exploited in an orchestrated way. But can we really function in a way to describe the way we feel, through a set of images that are far twisted than the way we see it?

The act of disappearing within the disturbances. – Hooghly, India – 2018

I am the feeling that makes up the effigy in an unconfined echo, giving itself a separate flavor. And I miss the filled up conversations amidst the vacant hopes of desire, which might help me realize the current state of mine. But those are all part of a story that began long ago.

Forms is just another mould of an unsatisfactory minded personality, reflected within the uncertainty of the projected illness, that has been present with its cold touch almost submerging with the feeling of “Lack of being”. It is a mixture of negativity and putting me in the position of self doubt, through the chaotic restlessness challenging my own state of confidence at all levels. I have dissolved all the shyness and opened my body as a witness to decipher whatever is going on in my mind. It’s been three years and still I can say I am not okay. I like to stay aloof from the faces of the society and have discovered death in a new way.

Identity is always questionable and manipulation is just a state of desire to show what we feel. Changing faces of people we meet every day, denotes how time passes so fast and with it the relations slowly become so meaningless that we only have to map our fragments and history to define who we are. Sometimes I feel, that there is nothing to be afraid of because we anyhow have lost ourselves with the passing time and have lost belief in who we are.

A big void inside from the love I lost in the past. – Pondicherry, India -2017

Hiding between the contours of death and life, breaking the fragmented memories through each drop of addiction, I have faced it all. Unable to respond to all the agonizing pains, I took the use of many unhealthy substances, been with many friends whose situations are pathetic than mine, and have found myself walking in the middle of the night at unusual stranded places, to find the darkness ruling beside you. The images evoke a sense of rejected happiness, with its perforated textures, depicting the psychological conditions in my head. Sometimes they are repetitive, and most of them have been shot within the interiors of my cell, the prisoner of which I have been since the last few years.

I have often challenged my self-worth because I do not believe that I am worthy of happiness, love or good health. It’s been a long time that I have distanced myself from the people who were close to me. This is a tell-tale sign that after alienating myself from most of the people I was looking for something to make me feel better but I am looking at all the wrong places. My morals, ethics and everything that once constructed my identity are all gone. I have become a shell of a person with the distractions only taking away my attention away from the problem. “The person has a void inside; they just feel so much pain from the past.”

Sudden nightmares and unnecessary cramps. – Kolkata – 2018

I am suffering from a state of uneasiness, uncertainty and fear resulting from anticipation of a realistic or fantasized threatening situation, often impairing psychological functioning. I have certain tendencies of high intensity fear and I feel an incredible amount of fear, trepidation and foreboding accompanied by a strong urge to escape.

Time is just another passing moment which seems to bless us momentarily but we all search for the eternal bliss, which can exist for more than a lifetime. But is this really the end or the beginning of something that I believe is going to last for more than a decade, even after all the questions about my own situation remains unanswered. What am I looking for? Is it happiness or loneliness? But I think everything is based upon a choice. Even this state demands a response.

This is merely a subjective approach of mine towards a project that I have been doing for quite a long time. I am merely showing the situation of my mind at this moment through the plethora of caliginous feelings. These are all how I see my surroundings and the nature when I am down with anxiety attacks. I am searching for the eternal euphoria amidst all these construed illusions of the habitat existing between me and my feelings. For which I have termed this project as Forms.

Expressing all of these through a series of photographs kind of makes me feel happy but momentarily.