Art Essay,Depression,Performing Art
Depression is a feeling that we all have and we have all experienced it at some point in our lives. And that’s my theme today: depression.
There are two parts in my work: one is the photography, and the other one is the video. Both of them are using students’ facial expression and body posture to express depression.
The reason that I chose this theme is because ever since I got into Grade 11, sometimes I can be depressed. We stay up late every night to do homework. We have to take preparation class for the upcoming SAT test. And we have to face the fact that every score matters since we are soon going to apply for colleges… Sometimes, the pressure is getting overwhelming. We knew life is going to get tough in Grade 11, but we didn’t see it would be this tough. However, I am aware it’s not just for us. I assume all the eleventh graders, or even all students around the world will need to get through a tough time. All these pressure and heavy work can cause depression.
Also, we are at the age of teenagers. It’s time for us to step into the real life and we have to face everything on our own and not under parents’ shelters. We have to admit the fact that things can be really messy and annoying sometimes. It’s the other cause for the feeling of depression.
Despite the fact that we all have depression inside ourselves, we have no place to express it. Therefore, I use “depression” as my theme.
Speaking of the technical part. The black and white can emphasize on the depress feeling. The venue I chose is an empty room with white walls and wooden floor, and nothing else. I wanted to keep the simplicity of the composition, and also to give people a feeling of lonely.
I chose five students to be in my work. They are wearing uniforms to represent their identities as students, since my theme is mainly about depression from study. In the scene, I put some books and papers around the person. It symbolizes the study. And also, every person has different level of depression. In fact, different people can even express a certain feeling differently. So by choosing five students, we can actually see five different levels of depression through not only their body posture, but also their facial expression, as shown in the video.
About the photograph, at first I was going to do one photo with five people in it. Each of them being placed on one spot and expressing different feelings of depression. However, after realizing it would be hard to get all of them in one picture and it would be hard to show the asethetism; I abandoned this idea. Instead, I took five photographs separately, so that different levels of depression can be expressed one after another, from the least depress feeling to the most. I shot the photos at different angles so that I can capture the best posture and feeling from each person. Every photo represents something different. For instance, in my first photo, the girl was standing still and facing down on the floor. From it, we can tell she’s unhappy. And in the fourth photo, the boy is punching against the wall, and leaning forward; it looks like he’s trying to support himself standing. It shows a much more stronger emotion than unhappy, it shows a kind of angry and frustrated feeling.
There are two parts in my work: one is the photography, and the other one is the video. Both of them are using students’ facial expression and body posture to express depression.
The reason that I chose this theme is because ever since I got into Grade 11, sometimes I can be depressed. We stay up late every night to do homework. We have to take preparation class for the upcoming SAT test. And we have to face the fact that every score matters since we are soon going to apply for colleges… Sometimes, the pressure is getting overwhelming. We knew life is going to get tough in Grade 11, but we didn’t see it would be this tough. However, I am aware it’s not just for us. I assume all the eleventh graders, or even all students around the world will need to get through a tough time. All these pressure and heavy work can cause depression.
Also, we are at the age of teenagers. It’s time for us to step into the real life and we have to face everything on our own and not under parents’ shelters. We have to admit the fact that things can be really messy and annoying sometimes. It’s the other cause for the feeling of depression.
Despite the fact that we all have depression inside ourselves, we have no place to express it. Therefore, I use “depression” as my theme.
Speaking of the technical part. The black and white can emphasize on the depress feeling. The venue I chose is an empty room with white walls and wooden floor, and nothing else. I wanted to keep the simplicity of the composition, and also to give people a feeling of lonely.
I chose five students to be in my work. They are wearing uniforms to represent their identities as students, since my theme is mainly about depression from study. In the scene, I put some books and papers around the person. It symbolizes the study. And also, every person has different level of depression. In fact, different people can even express a certain feeling differently. So by choosing five students, we can actually see five different levels of depression through not only their body posture, but also their facial expression, as shown in the video.
About the photograph, at first I was going to do one photo with five people in it. Each of them being placed on one spot and expressing different feelings of depression. However, after realizing it would be hard to get all of them in one picture and it would be hard to show the asethetism; I abandoned this idea. Instead, I took five photographs separately, so that different levels of depression can be expressed one after another, from the least depress feeling to the most. I shot the photos at different angles so that I can capture the best posture and feeling from each person. Every photo represents something different. For instance, in my first photo, the girl was standing still and facing down on the floor. From it, we can tell she’s unhappy. And in the fourth photo, the boy is punching against the wall, and leaning forward; it looks like he’s trying to support himself standing. It shows a much more stronger emotion than unhappy, it shows a kind of angry and frustrated feeling.
About the video, I was planning to place my camera at a certain spot and only take down the posture at the beginning. However, I realized in that way the video would be too simple and there would be no asethetism. So I changed my mind. For each person, I took down video clips of their postures, movements, and even facial expressions because I think the facial expression can show the inside of a person. I put everything into slow motion so that it would correspond to the theme of depression. And I also made some clips of the books on the floor, to emphasis our struggle in study. In the video, there are parts where people don’t move, but there are also parts in action, by doing that, people can experience the feeling more deeply.
Another thing I’ve changed is the background music. I was going to use Face the Sun by James Blunt but because of the strong feeling in his voice created an excessively sad sensation, I couldn’t use it. So then I chose to use the instrumental version of Hurt by Leona Lewis, and later I found out that it was actually a song by “Nine Inch Nails” in 1994.
Through the work, I want to show people several feelings of depression: upset, depressed, struggling, hopeless, frustrated… By showing these feeling, I would like more people to know and most importantly understand that we aren’t happy all the time. We have our pressure, we get depressed, and we have so many things to worry about at some point in our lives, or even a stage of our lives… Sometimes, study isn’t easy. But no one sees it. People have this perception that students should be happy all the time because all they have to do is homework and they don’t have lots of other works to do. But I think study is just as hard as working since every day, there are students struggling in study and depressed by study. However, we aren’t expecting the pressure to go away as we are growing up, we just want more understandings from people and we want people to see our pain and struggle. That’s all we need.
Overall, by showing this work, I want to say, depression is something we all have once in a while. We, as the students, sometimes don’t know how to express ourselves’ feelings and we don’t know how to deal with the depression. So I think what we would like to have is someone can give attention to us, help us and most importantly understand us. I think that’s what we really need.
Link to the video: http://v.qq.com/boke/page/o/1/w/o01245am21w.html
Another thing I’ve changed is the background music. I was going to use Face the Sun by James Blunt but because of the strong feeling in his voice created an excessively sad sensation, I couldn’t use it. So then I chose to use the instrumental version of Hurt by Leona Lewis, and later I found out that it was actually a song by “Nine Inch Nails” in 1994.
Through the work, I want to show people several feelings of depression: upset, depressed, struggling, hopeless, frustrated… By showing these feeling, I would like more people to know and most importantly understand that we aren’t happy all the time. We have our pressure, we get depressed, and we have so many things to worry about at some point in our lives, or even a stage of our lives… Sometimes, study isn’t easy. But no one sees it. People have this perception that students should be happy all the time because all they have to do is homework and they don’t have lots of other works to do. But I think study is just as hard as working since every day, there are students struggling in study and depressed by study. However, we aren’t expecting the pressure to go away as we are growing up, we just want more understandings from people and we want people to see our pain and struggle. That’s all we need.
Overall, by showing this work, I want to say, depression is something we all have once in a while. We, as the students, sometimes don’t know how to express ourselves’ feelings and we don’t know how to deal with the depression. So I think what we would like to have is someone can give attention to us, help us and most importantly understand us. I think that’s what we really need.
Link to the video: http://v.qq.com/boke/page/o/1/w/o01245am21w.html