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There are a lot of lonely and depressed people out there ..

 

 

More often than not, the cause is us ...

ioannis what's the point of the above attachment?

 

John, comes across more as someone taking hard drugs, esp the shades. Love the tights. The picture as a vignette effect, I assume it's flash due to angle of camera..it works well.

Thanks to both of you for a dark, powerful, and evocative image! It makes us think about things we might rather ignore.

A strange photo which certainly causes the mind to move - to wonder. The composition is strong and dynamic - to the point of being unsettling. That's a real plus.

Thank you all .. loneliness leads to depression, which can in turn be the cause of other problems, including alcohol and drugs ... this is a gentle reminder that such problems can be treated at their origin .. and that sometimes "we" are the ones at fault ..

An evocative image. Without the shades the pill bottle would not quite drive the message home. Good choice of tonality to set the mood.

Depression is a severe, dead-serious problem for a lot people and you are riding on the theme here on the nude section. Why is she nude, why the glasses, why is there lipstick. If she'd be depressed, taken the pills, believe the sight would make you sick, puke. This one doesn't. It looks plain staged. I appreciate you bringing the topic to the audience, but really, do you know what you are talking about here? In my opinion this is John Peri at worst I've seen.

Splendid work, beautiful model and excellent b&W, original always.

 

Alberto

Well that's wonderful Juha .. according to you it gets worse every time .. keep passsing by, I shall try not to deceive you! What a shame I can't satisfy many others though as well as I do you , you seem to live in a world almost of your own here on PN.

 

According to Eeva Ahtisaari 9 % of the population in Suomi-land (!) suffered from depression last year alone! Take care, it's an ailment that leads to all kinds of self abuse. A strong initial sign can be insecurity and unwarranted aggressiveness.

This picture triggers so many thoughts!

 

First I see a sexy woman with her tights pulled down. Then I see the cold tiles, the pillbox, the pills. Is she sleeping, fainted, od'd? Did she fall off the wc? No, she is "just depressed". Why? You say we are often at fault. So did someone else pull down those tights? Did someone misuse or abuse her? What does the ring on her right hand mean? Why the sunglasses? Is she taking drugs or are these aspirins? Am I missing some important clues?

 

Every picture tells a story - this one tells a thousand stories, all in the eye of the beholder. You have really added a dimension to your photography here, John!

Thanks Lennart. That is precisely what it's all about.

 

Ioannis, Marko, Joe, Steve, Jim as well as you all seem to have understood it so far .. I guess you just need some sensitivity, intellectual flexibility and the absence of a chip on your shoulder.

 

 

You seem to be deviating from your usual style here. I like the concept, but for me, the pills and associated bottle are a bit too small and have too little contrast to contribute as much to the image as I would like to see.

 

This is a personal opinion, but when the narrative is this strong, the principal elements of the narative should all stand out much stronger than the pills and the bottle do in this image. One other minor detail, a bit more unsharp mask MIGHT increase the drama.

 

It seems that you are also breaking from convention.

 

Jim Phelps

Good point Jim, thank you. I guess it stands out better in colour, but the black and white version possibly adds a climate of malaise, hence I preferred this image. But I do see what you mean. If one searches reasons for the collapse though, it is still subtely indicative of what may be wrong ..

 

Having worked in the area of neuropsychopharmacology for 25 years, I have indeed known depression to lead to alcoholism and drugs (and vice versa), but the real tragedy is that their use then increase the state of depression.

 

 

Jim, it's not as new a theme as you may imply. The whole of this portfolio deals with loneliness and depression .. it is a subject I have long observed and I would still have lots to add ..

 

A possible approach would be to have the pills and the bottle in color and the remainder of the image in B&W.

 

This expression of loneliness and depression is much more explicit here than in most of your other work, although the normal and abnormal psychology theme is evident in much of your work.

 

This is the only one of your fotos that reminds me of the really bad part of the 1960's.

 

 

Yes, I guess we saw this and worse .. actually, "staged" as of course it is, this image is based on a personal recollection in the mid seventies .. you know, at first you don't really know what's wrong .. so the subtleness of the pill box may not be so out of place .. I stepped on them before discovering them ..

In my opinion this image has met it's intentions. It is timeless as well. This is more a reflection of the 80's for me. Although staged it evokes real emotion. How does one say "well done" on a subject such as this?

 

Jim's compositional observations are insightful.

Wonderful suicide scene . Love the color tone and light ( Natural ? )

Well, John, congratulations, you are right in your conclusion. The 9% information was not quite correct though (statistics you see), but yes, e.g. suicide figures in Finland are one of the highest in the world. Every year about 1200 Finns commit suicide which is about twice the amount of traffic deaths here. It's 28.4 suicides per 100 000 people. In the USA the same figure is 13.9. In absolute figures there are over 30 000 suicides in the States every year. Did you know that suicide is the 13th most popular death reason in the world. Which ever country you look at it's a man four times as often as a woman.

The problem with this photo is that it is far too clean. There is nothing clean or romantic about depression, it's all ugly, messy, sad through and out. The only people who get a beautiful life due to depression are the pill makers and shrinks.

Juha, how nice to be engaging in an almost civilized conversation with you, for once without having to reply to accusations of peri-porn and being told that I have nothing but a trophy collection of girlie photos to show to people .. really, how silly!

 

Contrary to what you implied further up, once again without knowing (strange that you accuse others of that!), I am very familiar with the subject, having taught in the science faculty and in medical school for many years! Nor do I make wild statements of form to impress others with false numbers or "statistics". The figure of 9% quoted was written and published by Ahtisaari in 'Disability at Work" on the occasion of the World Mental Health Day. The overall percentage of depression in Finland is around 20% of the total population at one time in their lifetime.Time flies and this was actually a couple of years back, but the numbers have not changed very much. There are obviously more pertinent studies to quote, but this is a photo site .. and you know perfectly well why I chose the example that I did.

 

A protective measure is to try and be tolerant towards others and to search for something in common to share with them.

That is the message of this photo, which so many others than you have understood, and that is also my personal message to you. If you reject other people, they will reject you. If one does it frequently enough it leads to isolation and depression. There is no single truth in life, least of all our own, try to get along, you never know you may find you enjoy it!

 

To return to the image above, sure it is too "clean" .. it is a photo .. it is staged as you so rightly say ... but I feel that it may convey the message that I spoke about in my few words of introduction. Indeed my personal recollection on which this scene is based was considerably more gruesome, I will spare you the awful details, but the clothing, the position, the pills, the underlying cause of depression were all as implied in the picture and indeeed the young lady was young and most beautiful, which only accentuated the horror ... others photos simulating depression are to be found in the same file. They are all simulations. Obviously, I would not attempt to present work from a clinical setting on these pages even if I possesed it which I don't.

Sorry Marko and Alon, I did not reply earlier to your question. It was flash on the camera pointing away from the subject.

John,

 

Such an interesting debate above. Viewing this image without the benefit of the descriptive narrative, my first impression was that of a lovely young woman that has for some reason come to the end of her rope, and perhaps a combination of drugs and alcohol has deterred her ability to remove her clothing in the evening. Despite it's darker overtones it is a sexy image and brings out the fireman mentality in me - wanting to rescue the damsel in distress. Good job on both the photographer's and model's efforts.

John, a little off topic note. Figures aside, depression is quite common problem in Finland regardless how ever you measure it. The north parts are especially difficult since there is long winter period without any sun.

What ever diminishing you say about my comments, they will make you a better photographer. Good critique is sometimes like kicking the ants nest. Most often I don't like your photos for the lack of credibility. They always make me wonder the motives of the photographer. Notice that I do think you have good photos too here and there, I've always said that. I don't think the key to good photography is technical excellence but very much self study of why and for what. If getting a lot of tailender comments serve your ego, fine, but they will not make you question your photography, they will not put the pressure to improve, to advance.

That is your interpretation Juha, not mine nor that of other people, though you are fully entitled to your opinion. I have always welcomed and encouraged critique of my work, not of myself nor my models. The only thing I contest is the bad manners and undercover way in which you express them, sometimes on pages that I have not visited before and that others refer me to.

 

You have your own motives, just as we each of us have also in posting our work, and nobody really knows them fully other than the author, actually, sometimes not even he, particularly when it has to do with matters of women and nudity ! You have made a vendetta out of slandering me on various threads of this site. It is spiteful, gratuitous and self-serving. For the most part all you have succeeeded in doing is making a fool of yourself. At any rate, you have received little to no support until now.

 

"Tailender photographers" .. hum .. before insulting them also, maybe you should look at the quality of the work of some of the people that you accuse of that both here on this page and in the past ..

 

Follow my advice Juha, it's a good one, try making some friends, it's good for one's health and well being. The alternatives are quite devasting. That is precisely the subject of this posting.

 

Now let's return to critiquing a photo, not the author, not his intentions or your intepretation of them and certainly not the models either, directly or by implication. That is how gentlemen (and ladies) behave on this site.

John,

 

I don't think I've commented on your work, though I recognize it from four blocks away. This is great, not like most of your photos, and not offensive in the least to me. Until I read the monologues, I didn't even see the pill bottle (Tylenol, based on the size and apparent pill look) and handful of pills.

 

What I did see was a woman looking at the window for an out. Maybe she has a hangover and is in such pain that she can't even pull up her stockings; or maybe she said screw it, this is a fine enough place to regain my composure. What I didn't see was a suicide theme. I just see a woman looking for escape; as most of us do all the time.

 

I like the angle of attack here on the shot; allows my mind to create the rest of the room. Straight on can be boring (relax, none of your work is) and this keeps the left-side engaged.

 

Well done. And, pass on to your model how strong she is to have been on the cold, bare tile for any length of time. Brrrrr!

 

fergi

Thanks Andrew, I appreciate that. I think the courage of the model lies principally in accepting to look less than glamorous in the circumstance.

 

The scene can be interpreted in any of a number of ways of course, from the spoilt brat that has a hangover to the desperate case that I had in mind. I go over in my mind how much I should reveal or not regarding the scene that inspired the photo, but it's irrelevant to what anyone else may imagine. The photo should really speak on it's own and I have already been too verbose. I guess the way the thread evolved more or less provoked that. I will only mention that yes, indeed, she was unable to get dressed again, and in a strange kind of way I feel a kind of relief or satisfaction that that part of the message got through.