This was a degree assignment from my first semester at university. The aim of this assignment was to capture a personal story about myself, using photography. The images needed to represent authorial story telling and symbolism; probing the innermost thoughts or attitudes toward everyday events in life. The images should needed to be an empathy or connection to the event through the photographer not photos of life from a distance. This type of photography is referred to as 'I-Novelist Photography.'

An ‘I-Novel' is a literary genre in Japanese literature used to describe a type of confessional literature where the events in the story correspond to events in the author's life. The author’s presence in the situations/events has to be easily noted by the author’s emphasis on the first person.  From the start, an I-Novel was considered to expose the dark side of society or the dark side of the author's life.

 

The idea behind my exploration of I-Novelist photography was to capture my experiences of travel between home and university. This may seem, to many, to be a simple A to B journey however, my suffering from depression and anxiety makes this journey more difficult for me than it really should be. The slightest uncertainties or unplanned occurrences can cause countless psychological “problems” that are difficult for me to cope with. I consider this as the 'dark side' of my life. When travelling, the anxieties take over and I feel trapped. There are, however, moments of brightness when I feel the anxieties subside momentarily. I wanted to portray this in the photographs, and felt that a good way to do this would be to focus on monochrome images, but leave subtle splashes of vibrant colour in some of the photos to represent these moments.