101 Emotions
I will not be alone in saying that I have always been fascinated by our mind, and by how all our emotions, feelings and thoughts work. There is still so much unknown about them, these mysteries, hidden behind the mask of our face.
If we could look into our mind, what would it look like?
My very basic understanding of emotions is that they are complex. Described in dictionaries as being ‘strong feelings’, they are classified as instinctive, and how they manifest themselves is often intertwined with many factors such as circumstance, mood, temperament and personality.
In myself, I often wonder how emotions even can sometimes just appear, as if from nowhere, and then disappear again, for no reason.
One day, while I was experimenting with frozen paint, I peered in to watch the frozen paint melting. As the paint, ice, water, and of course light, all intermingled with each other, changing and evolving as the minutes went on, it occurred to me that this sight had resemblances to how our own emotions act out.
I could almost be looking in at the inner workings of my mind!
Everything was constantly moving, nothing was static. Sometimes movements were short and sharp, at other times slow. The different areas would merge, repel, blend in and out of each other, and even start to take over each other.
There were different colours, shades, patterns and shapes.
There were areas of clarity and detail, and areas of blurriness. There were areas in light and areas in murkiness and darkness.
There were areas of orderliness, and areas that were chaotic and explosive.
There were areas of containment and closure and then areas of openness and flow.
There was a depth, from layers close up, to layers in the distance that seemed to stretch back to eternity.
Whole shapes seemed to be made up of lots of different tiny molecules, making up a whole, larger than themselves. I particularly liked these molecules. It almost gave the sight a ‘scientific edge’. To help make it believable that I was peering through a magnifying glass into the mind.
It was a short period of time before the paint and ice all melted. Similar again to that of emotions, where the signals are only supposed to be fleeting, as opposed to moods which last longer, I took out my camera, and tried to capture these fleeting moments in time.
There are of course not 101 emotions in our body; it was the title that attracted me and was a ‘nice’ number for me to work towards. Scientific suggestions range from six basic emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust) to 27, with added emotional experiences such as calmness, excitement, anxiety, envy etc included.
With my images, as I am imagining what emotional experiences would look like if we could see them, there could be no number. It would be an endless infinity of looks, as the emotional experience of happiness of eating an ice cream would probably look very different from the emotional experience of happiness at winning an olympic gold medal. And my emotional experience of happiness at eating the ice cream would be different from yours, as indeed, it would be different if I ate it the next day or in a different set of circumstances. Perhaps every emotion we feel and experience would look different from another. Although it is ‘one’ emotion, it would have tiny variations. Like if we bring 100 women into a room. Although we are all women, we are also all unique.
In light of that, and with the images being obviously abstract and so very open to interpretation, I felt that it would be too constricting to label the images with the emotions they reacted within me.
So instead of titling each image with an emotion, I have numbered them, to let the viewer decide what emotions he or she derives most from each image.
I wish the images to be large, as I want the viewer to almost look inwards, to feel as if they are within that emotion, being enveloped by it, as emotions do to us in real life.
I took many pictures, but for this collection I tried to choose images that could potentially show a variety of emotions, while being aesthetically pleasing to look at, at the same time. These 101 images are my favourites.
If we could look into our mind, what would it look like?
My very basic understanding of emotions is that they are complex. Described in dictionaries as being ‘strong feelings’, they are classified as instinctive, and how they manifest themselves is often intertwined with many factors such as circumstance, mood, temperament and personality.
In myself, I often wonder how emotions even can sometimes just appear, as if from nowhere, and then disappear again, for no reason.
One day, while I was experimenting with frozen paint, I peered in to watch the frozen paint melting. As the paint, ice, water, and of course light, all intermingled with each other, changing and evolving as the minutes went on, it occurred to me that this sight had resemblances to how our own emotions act out.
I could almost be looking in at the inner workings of my mind!
Everything was constantly moving, nothing was static. Sometimes movements were short and sharp, at other times slow. The different areas would merge, repel, blend in and out of each other, and even start to take over each other.
There were different colours, shades, patterns and shapes.
There were areas of clarity and detail, and areas of blurriness. There were areas in light and areas in murkiness and darkness.
There were areas of orderliness, and areas that were chaotic and explosive.
There were areas of containment and closure and then areas of openness and flow.
There was a depth, from layers close up, to layers in the distance that seemed to stretch back to eternity.
Whole shapes seemed to be made up of lots of different tiny molecules, making up a whole, larger than themselves. I particularly liked these molecules. It almost gave the sight a ‘scientific edge’. To help make it believable that I was peering through a magnifying glass into the mind.
It was a short period of time before the paint and ice all melted. Similar again to that of emotions, where the signals are only supposed to be fleeting, as opposed to moods which last longer, I took out my camera, and tried to capture these fleeting moments in time.
There are of course not 101 emotions in our body; it was the title that attracted me and was a ‘nice’ number for me to work towards. Scientific suggestions range from six basic emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust) to 27, with added emotional experiences such as calmness, excitement, anxiety, envy etc included.
With my images, as I am imagining what emotional experiences would look like if we could see them, there could be no number. It would be an endless infinity of looks, as the emotional experience of happiness of eating an ice cream would probably look very different from the emotional experience of happiness at winning an olympic gold medal. And my emotional experience of happiness at eating the ice cream would be different from yours, as indeed, it would be different if I ate it the next day or in a different set of circumstances. Perhaps every emotion we feel and experience would look different from another. Although it is ‘one’ emotion, it would have tiny variations. Like if we bring 100 women into a room. Although we are all women, we are also all unique.
In light of that, and with the images being obviously abstract and so very open to interpretation, I felt that it would be too constricting to label the images with the emotions they reacted within me.
So instead of titling each image with an emotion, I have numbered them, to let the viewer decide what emotions he or she derives most from each image.
I wish the images to be large, as I want the viewer to almost look inwards, to feel as if they are within that emotion, being enveloped by it, as emotions do to us in real life.
I took many pictures, but for this collection I tried to choose images that could potentially show a variety of emotions, while being aesthetically pleasing to look at, at the same time. These 101 images are my favourites.
