Visualizing Nothingness—Angst, Nausea, and the Overman through Photographs

Even if I'm technically finished with school (until I go back, anyway), it's incredibly satisfying to be finished with a final project and to like it. Following is my "mission statement" (in quotes because the credibility of such a name is dubious to me), the six photographs I used, the quotes that accompanied each photo and the set in general, and several photos showing the whole setup. I realize that sadly perhaps a lot of the context/presence of suspended photos is lost in blog format, but alas.

Why do we find ourselves creating meaning and structure for our world? We may find ourselves, occasionally, wondering why things are set up as they are. Existential philosophers such as Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Jean-Paul Sartre would challenge the assertion that our world has inherent structure. Indeed, they would suggest that such an assertion is a human fabrication designed to impose meaning and structure on an otherwise senseless world; it is precisely this imposition, however, that takes away our will to act as completely free agents.

The response to knowing one has complete free will and that all structure is meaningless can be overwhelming: Kierkegaard called this Angst, Sartre called it Nausea, Nietzsche classified it as the beginnings of the Overman—the person who has become their own master—and all are reactions to knowing one has complete free will and complete responsibility, all are reactions for when traditional points of reference are exposed as potentially false and taken away.

My purpose for this project, then, is to present the concepts of Angst, Nausea, and the Overman through photography. I intend to explore how the uses of shape, light, shadow, overall contrast, and perspective can create an understanding of these Existentialist concepts. To further aid this endeavor, I am not tacking the photos to the wall—I am, instead, choosing to suspend them in the air. While there is certainly a visual appeal to this choice, it aptly helps to illustrate the idea that we have no restrictions and hang in nothingness. Additionally, quotes from Kierkegaard, Sartre and Nietzsche accompany the photographs to help explain what the Existential undertones are.

Here are a few photos of the display (pardon them being cell phone shots):

 testing to see if the weight of the photos would pull down the hanger wires, plus sign asking the hangers not be removed... which they almost were

 testing, different angle

...and with the quotes

The following are the photos in the display. Some I have posted before, certainly without the intention of using them in the project until I realized that I could use them.

 ...one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have this chaos in yourselves. From Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche (this is a reprint of the accidental double exposure I made. took a while, but I had to get the contrast fixed)

 Once you label me you negate me. Soren Kierkegaard

 What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under. From Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche

 ...Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, which emerges when the spirit wants to posit the synthesis and freedom looks down into its own possibility, laying hold of finiteness to support itself. From The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard.

 Your bad love of yourselves turns your solitude into a prison. From Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche

 Freedom is exile. Jean-Paul Sartre

And, finally, the three quotes I had attached to the wall with the photos as a set. I wanted dearly to use them, because they help give better context to the set of photos and my project, and the last one not only fits the presentation of the photos but is simply beautiful. All are from Sartre:

Existence precedes and rules essence. 

From Being and Nothingness

Life has no meaning, a priori... it is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose. From Being and Nothingness

I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It moves. From Nausea

鏡/visualizing Angst

One of the purposes (perhaps the purpose, given how things flow into one another) of my project is to try and visually represent Angst. Why I opened my big mouth I might never know, but here's one of the photographs I've chosen.

"Anxiety may be compared with dizziness. He whose eye happens to look down into the yawning abyss becomes dizzy. But what is the reason for this? It is just as much in his own eye as in the abyss, for suppose he had not looked down. Hence, anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, which emerges when the spirit wants to posit the synthesis and freedom looks down into its own possibility, laying hold of finiteness to support itself. Freedom succumbs to dizziness. Further than this, psychology cannot and will not go. In that very moment everything is changed, and freedom, when it again rises, sees that it is guilty. Between these two moments lies the leap, which no science has explained and which no science can explain. He who becomes guilty in anxiety becomes as ambiguously guilty as it is possible to become." Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety p. 61

 By the way, anxiety is the same as Existential Angst, pronounced "ahngst," not "aynkst."

hanging photos, 1

I decided that for Thursday's final I want my photos hanging away from the wall. There were several reasons behind this decision: It's different; It will hopefully help drive home the idea of Nausea/Anxiety and lack of restrictions; It's more interesting this way. All of these reasons are true, one of them is more sound than the others.

Since it would probably be more of a headache than I care for to hang the photos from the lighting rails 10" in the air, I rearranged two wire coat hangers that I can affix to the tops of the padded boards along the walls. I plan on hanging the photos from these wires using fishline and clips:

 Materials I'll use: Leatherman, fishline, electrical tape, binder clips, coat hangers.

Coat hangers, unbent and plied as I'd like them. Each is about 2.5' long.

 

Closeup of ends. I'd prefer not to accidentally tear whatever these might poke into.

Each photo is going to be framed in a white matt(e?), since any other color would be distracting in this case. I'll hopefully get some shots of the finished product, because sometimes I like to show off. Either way, expect a nice long writeup of what the final project is (I believe this is called a "mission statement," but that sends wild thoughts into my head so you can also say it's an attempt at explaining myself), replete with photos of the whole business as well as the actual photos I'm using in the project. So many photos, whatever shall I do.

I'm pretty sure this general project will be an ongoing theme.

Lockers

This is one photo I plan on using in my "Existential photography" final project. If you're wondering how this might at all fit, you'll find out next week when I write up a good long post about the 5 (or 7, we'll see) photos and Existentialism.

One of the comments I received today as per this topic was "Existentialism always has struck me as... depressing." Excellent, I say, because this seems to be the common response to Existentialism. Oh hey, Angst, didn't see you there.

The next few days will be busy with going through Also Sprach Zarathustra and existentialism is a humanism, and possibly (parts of) The Sickness Unto Death.

Windows

More stark lines, and as with the other photos of stark lines it's not necessarily clear if the photo's been rotated or not.

Ah, windows.

As a note, I've settled on the following topic for my photo final: restrictions, or lack thereof, and subsequently how we perceive our world. I figured I'd use strong light/shadow combinations. Specific thoughts on what to take photos of have, so far, involved photograms, overshadowed pools of water with cleverly used lighting, and silhouettes in frames. Note that this whole idea stemmed from my insane response of "Existential photography," and thus stems from ideas about Angst/the Abyss/free will/total responsibility/etc.

I am looking for feedback on the project, and if you have a suggestion for what to take a photo of or anything, tell me.

By the way, if you don't actually know what Existentialism is in any fashion, please look it up. I'm tired of getting silly responses for what is "Existential." People have no idea what it means. Don't feel bad, I didn't either until I started studying it.

Unedited B&W Prints 1 and Existentialism?

After an hour and a half of fighting scanners, I have prints to share with you. Unedited prints, hurray, meaning they're really just tests.

Also, today I was asked what my final photo 1 project will be. The first thing to come popping out of my big mouth was "Existential photography," as if that was a very normal subject and how I'd do this was quite obvious.

I have no idea what I'm doing.

Potential ideas are: pulling quotes from Thus Spake Zarathustra and taking photos to match up with them; taking photos of the Existential concepts if free will (Angst and the Uebermensch included, naturally), "...Man is not yet a self," and "Existence precedes essence."


What to do.

Here are some contact strips of photos I'd like to develop. Please note, as I have with great joy, that I got a photo of the baby engineer. I'm unreasonably excited about that; he kept moving so fast I had a hard time getting him in focus but I GOT HIM. I swear, he's like seven years old and is already very much an engineer. Note also the lovely pieces of strong, abstract lines.

Superfood and Desert Solitaire and Stuff

After hearing my good friend [the] Blake rant for years and years about how good Odwalla's "original-flavored"
 Superfood is, I finally (*finally*) got around to even tasting the stuff. It is as delicious as he claimed. It is also the most ugly-looking drink I've seen.

It is green, like blended lentils (I HATE lentils), only perhaps mixed with the stuff you lay down floor tiles with plus some of the Swamp of Despair for extra effect. Oh, it looks so gross. But it is amazing; it tastes like a fruit smoothie ('cause, er, it is...).

In any case.. I do believe back in January I mentioned something about drawings. Well, I've had them, in a state of near-done-ness, for a while now, and haven't done anything about them. Like, you know, finish them. Or even scan what I've got and put them up or anything. I hereby promise that by Sunday they will be posted here, finished or otherwise.

Random note: I have (relatively) recently happened upon the Internet word "derp." I think it's an amazing word, and it is one of my favorites. It feels fun to say.

Sometime I am going to write thoughts about music here. Specifically, about rock 'n roll. More specifically, why I like it so danged much. I'll provide a healthy list of songs (and maybe links to said songs) for your listening, I assure you.

And now, a quote I rather like, from Edward Abbey. I have just read it for the first time:

     I am here not only to evade for a while the clamor and filth and confusion of the cultural apparatus
     but also to confront, immediately and directly if it's possible, the bare bones of existence, the elemental
     and fundamental, the bedrock which sustains us. I want to be able to look at and into a juniper tree, a
     piece of quartz, a vulture, a spider, and see it as it is in itself, devoid of all humanly ascribed qualities,
     anti-Kantian, even the categories of scientific description. To meet God or Medusa face to face, even if it
     means risking everything human in myself. I deam of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self
     merges with a non-human world and yet somehow survives still intact, individual, separate. Paradox and
     bedrock.