Living With Anxiety (Photo Essay Analysis)

Here I will showcase but also analyse the meaning behind each of these images, and why they are taken in the style and way they are. Through this photo essay I will be the protagonist going under the name of ‘Clancy’ as it seems to be apart of my alter-ego, anxiety will also be personified as a physical manifestation, as with mental illness you can’t see it, so there’s not really anyway to show what I’m taking a picture.

This picture is of Clancy. In front of Clancy is a sort of mist effect, this was due to the exposure being wrongly set. Upon reviewing the image I thought it show cased anxiety quite nicely. When you have anxiety most of the times you feel this heaviness upon you, like this weight. When I see this image I see that weight in it’s physical form. In both this image and the second image the walls are blue which symbolises not just the physical manifestation of anxiety, but the atmosphere of anxiety. I have always linked my anxiety with the colour blue.

Here is what the image was meant to be. This image shows Clancy having his face grabbed by a mysterious arm. At first look, it does seem quite funny, but when you see what the message of the image is you can tell it gets deeper. This image is a representation of Clancy being controlled by a force in his head (anxiety). It seems to be controlling him in the sense that Anxiety is covering Clancy’s face and making the world look like this really scary place, this is what makes him afraid, agitated, nervous.

This image shows Clancy hiding under a table. The table represents what’s in Clancy’s head. This tells us that Clancy is afraid of what is actually going on in his head, he fears people’s judgement of him. People nearly always worry about major things coming up in life such as deadlines, but Clancy is worrying about how he should act around new people and what they will take him for. The image is out of focus, this was intentional, it’s also representing how hard it can be to focus at times, sometimes you have to do something but you physically can’t, so you need a distraction.

In this image I wanted to show the aftermath of stress/panic attack (This is not a proper anxiety attack but a reconstruction of the aftermath of one). This is something Clancy has experienced a few times. It happens when Clancy when he is under immense pressure. He doesn’t know how he is gonna overcome whatever he is facing. The sweat on Clancy’s face shows how distressing an anxiety attack can be.

Here is a photo of Clancy’s phone. This shows some of the inner conflict Clancy faces. We know from previous images that Clancy struggles when talking to other people. Something that makes us human is human interaction, Clancy is pretty shy among others so he hides behind a screen and types whatever he wants to say as no one will judge him for his hobbies and opinions in real time. Social media is something Clancy can loose himself in. It’s where he can create, be himself and not need to feel like he’s constantly feeling judged.

Here is a little reflection of Clancy. I like to believe the black represents the feeling of being hopeless and the white being the feeling of being fully free from inner demons. At this point Clancy is stuck in the black, this shows that at this moment in time Clancy feels like there is no hope, he realises the intense conditions that Anxiety brings him. This is rock bottom and now we just have to see how he makes it back up.

This image takes a drastic turn in Clancy’s life. The image is of Clancy’s feet, we see yellow socks along with yellow confetti sprinkled every where. last time we saw Clancy was when he was at rock bottom. Now we leave behind all the blues and industrial colours and we begin to fade into colour. The spectrum that I believe the colours take go along these lines:

Black-rock bottom

Blue-not given up but still in quite a bad place

Yellow-hope begins to return, taking on inner demons and not being defeated nor being defined by a mental illness.

White-this colour is when you are happy and at peace with your mind. This is where everyone wants to be and most people are.

This shows that Clancy is doing something he loves and now is starting to take a stand against his anxiety.

Here we see one of the factors in Clancy regaining control against his anxiety. We can tell that he likes music, music can help people out quite a lot. Music can do something to us, it can give us hope, it can make us brave, inspire us, help us fall in love, help us process thoughts, help us create. This tells us that music is one of the many escape routes Clancy takes.

We see another one of Clancy’s hobbies, he loves films, he likes the idea of leaving reality and entering somewhere where his problems are not there. Clancy likes indie films, due to the original stories he can get out of the film maker.  He also likes more mainstream movies such as the Marvel films as he loves loosing himself in something that would never happen in our world. Finally he likes Documentaries, we can see one of the documentaries he owns which is ‘I Am Heath Ledger’ which is someone Clancy respects and looks up to.

Here is the final thing that gives Clancy purpose. ‘The House Of Banter’, this YouTube channel is where Clancy makes prank videos, travelling videos, a web-series and skits. This is his main freedom and what gives him purpose. It also helps him to overcome his anxiety as he has to find new videos to release.