Ivan: The Divided Self

Ivan suffers from psychosis, a condition that causes him to hear a constant chattering of voices that gnaw at this psyche. He is unable to work, survives on benefits and lives at the very margins of society I have been working with Ivan since the commencement of lockdown in March 2020 to create an extensive series of portraits that reflect his lived experience and tell his story. My own psyche is scarred by the abuse I experienced at school. At some point during the creation of this work, I identified my own presence in the images; that of the small boy being tormented and abused at school. I began identifying specific memories from that time and used these vignettes to influence the direction and composition of the images. The direct visual story is that of Ivan’s experience of psychosis. The subtleties of the composition, the title and the captions for each image are my own experiences from childhood superimposed on Ivan’s present day experience.