Ludvig Perés

Penumbra

Photography

Project Statement

A man wearing a red jacket, cigarette in hand. Standing on the public stage, light shaped by the angles of the high-rises hitting him, punctuating his sunken gesture. A woman walking in-between shapes of light surrounded by geometric concrete forms, the surrounding architecture orchestrating the interaction of shadow and light to metaphorically show the nature of the unconscious mind; how small the active conscious is in relation to the vast unconscious.

With this series I show the way anxiety and depression can alter ones personal perception of the surrounding world. How these emotions can twist and distort the experience of reality and how they can cloud the mind. Making it hard, if not impossible, to see the true light of things. As this is something that I frequently experience, I let the photographs in this series serve as illustrations of how my emotions shape the way I perceive the world around me. The subjects I photograph all act as symbolic actors portraying me on a stage serving as an externalization of my inner thoughts and emotions visualized in the forms of shadow, light, and abstract architecture.

The photographs themselves are candid moments of strangers encountered during my many various walks among the streets of Chicago. I never interact with my subjects so to capture them as they are in the environment that surrounds them. This lets me best use my instincts to capture how I visually project these complex and often contradicting emotions onto the world in front of me, in order to process and make sense out of them.