Being and Non-Being

‘The fear of death […] haunts as does nothing else; it rumbles continuously under the surface; it is a dark, unsettling presence of the rim of consciousness’ - Irvin D. Yalom This series of photographs reflects upon and enacts the dichotomy of death anxiety and the fundamental anxiety of living. Existentialist thinkers argue that our daily anxiety stems from the unease of knowing that one day we will die - a fear of no choice or the idea of not knowing what will happen after we pass. Yet, the first Existential philosopher - Soren Kierkegaard - also wrote of anxiety as being ‘the dizziness of freedom’, the dizzying effect of looking into the boundlessness on one’s own possibilities, the knowledge that we have too many choices on how we lead our lives. These images are part performance and part observation, enacted and captured in an attempt to explore, discover and heal this anxiety within myself. It is the narrative of the inevitability of ageing, disappearing, the threat of non-being but also being that rumbles beneath these images.