To what extent does grief affect self identity and how can photography demonstrate this?

If someone had told me in January, that by April, I wouldn't be in school or be able to see any of my friends, I wouldn't believe them, but now it's all too real. We’ve all had to become accustomed to a completely new way of living this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, this includes zoom quizzes instead of parties, google meets instead of lessons, and watching yet another episode of ‘Friends’ as my only means of entertainment. The lockdown has challenged myself and everyone I know in so many ways that no one was ever expecting, so it’s definitely an event to be documented, which is why our photography project documenting our lives has been so appropriate. I decided to use the theme of grief, as I have experienced grief first hand and can also link it to the current situation, as I have almost been grieving my old life, this also links to self identity, which is hugely impacted upon by grief, this brings about the title of this essay, presenting the question of how grief can affect self identity. I can also bring about the grief of others in this essay and my project in general because I have experienced it very closely throughout my life following the death of my Dad as a child. This will become more prominent later on in the essay when I will introduce an artist who created a series of photographs specifically highlighting what her life was like after the death of her mother, but first, I'll start the essay with self identity, and the ways in which this can be affected by grief.

To demonstrate this, I took inspiration from the 1998 art installation ‘My Bed’ by Tracey Emin. (See first image in gallery) First appearing in the Saatchi Gallery as part of the opening exhibition when Charles Saatchi opened the new premises at County Hall in London (2000), the piece was based on a breakdown following the end of a relationship where she had stayed in bed for four days, when she eventually got out of it, and saw her room from an outside perspective, she noticed how it almost resembled the decay of her own life. Emin is trying to communicate to the viewer how our environments affect our state of mind, more specifically, how a messy room represents a frail mental health or self identity. This is exactly how I felt about my life during the peak of the lockdown, that it had fallen away from me and the best way to show that was my bedroom, because it had been my haven and the place where I now did everything. This is a perfect example of a changed perception of self, and is something that becomes prominent during the process of grief. Therefore, in response to this work, I did a shoot in my own bedroom, capturing the mundane reality of what my life had turned into, which, when comparing it to my life even two months prior, was a complete change of direction, and led to a loss of my own self identity greatly. This image (see second image in gallery) is one of my favourite images from the shoot, as I feel it captures exactly the message I’m trying to portray. It also can clearly be linked to Emin’s work and is a nod to the original message behind that as well. One of the differences between mine and Emin’s work is the motive behind it, because where I was photographing my room during a national lockdown, she was building a piece based on her room after a bad breakup. Nevertheless, both of these things link to my theme of self identity, as a loss of self can be picked up on both works. To keep the element of authenticity in which Emin so truthfully portrayed in her work, i didn't move my bed sheets at all for the image above, it was taken directly after I got up, which was around 1pm (my routine for lockdown) and the light had naturally fallen on my duvet like that. This is one of the reasons I like the image so much. Another thing that can be picked up on is the light. Light and dark are two words that connote such contrasting ideas, which works so well with the message this image is trying to portray. The light represents the happier parts of lockdown and the dark represents the worst parts of it, the parts where a loss of self may present itself. Self identity for me is very unreliable, and can fluctuate depending on my life and surroundings, therefore it was massively impacted by the lockdown. Not being able to see my friends or any of my loved ones made me feel as though I had lost a part of myself, which I know was a common feeling amongst many people, hence the question of the link between self identity and grief. Although Emin does not directly address this question in her work or any information regarding her work, one can draw some references to this topic within the piece. For example, the mass of clutter surrounding the bed is representative of an unstable state of mind, and the empty bottles of alcohol are also a link to this. Alcohol often represents loneliness or a state of being chaotic, and in this context it would've been Emin drinking heavily alone, this certainly is a hint towards codependency, which can often what happen during either the process of grief or the loss of self identity. In an interview with the Royal Academy in June 2014, Tracey Emin talks about her close connection with the piece as it immerses her into the life of herself 15 years prior, ‘I look at it today with nostalgia and fascination’ in another interview she did with Turner Contemporary, Emin says that the bed has ‘become like a ghost of my past, and all the things in it don't relate to me anymore’ such as the cigarettes and contraceptives. This can help answer my question in that within the context of when ‘My bed’ was created, Emin was going through a bad breakup and therefore a grief, and she herself was almost a different person during this period than she is on the other side of this experience. This alludes enormously to the fact that grief does in fact affect self identity.

The next artist this essay will be focusing on is Beatriz Ruibal, who created a series of images titled ‘Madre’ in 2012, following the death of her mother 2 years prior. (see third image in gallery) In her own words talking about the series, Ruibal says ‘With the death of my mother, just under two years ago, I decided to photograph her personal objects and details of her house, our house, in an obsessive fashion, I began to register images of the rooms of the house, as well as her personal effects, of the traces she had left behind. I wanted to make a record of the impact her passing away had left on me.’ When comparing the work of Beatriz Ruibal to Tracey Emin, one can easily pick out similarities and differences between the two. They've both used mundane objects that would be seen in everyday life, but used them to portray a mood they were each trying to translate through their work. For Ruibal, this mood was her grief, and the struggle of her trying to deal with everyday life without her mother, despite the constant reminders of her. For Emin, the mood in her work was her mental health and the chaotic way in which she had dealt with her breakdown, this can be contrasted with the solemn, more calming mood throughout Ruibal's work. ‘Madre’ can be a very relatable series of images to someone who has dealt with a major loss, which is why I wanted to use her as inspiration for my project, as it could be a comfort to see the pain another person has dealt with, as well as reflecting upon ones own life and how you deal with that day to day. When responding to this series with my own shoot in her style, I retrieved many of my fathers belongings and photographed them, which of course brought out much emotion, which I hope radiates through my work with the same sombre tone as Ruibal's. The issue of self identity in my project can also be drawn from Ruibal's work, the minimalism in her photographs could be symbolic of how her life has been pared back to only focus on her mother's death, and everything else is left in the background. This could be because her grief is so overwhelming that her own self identity has almost been lost in the rubble. This is where I feel grief and self identity are so closely related because they can both affect each other. This minimalist approach to photography is something that I tried to emulate in my response to her work, to achieve this mundane and solemn tone that Ruibal was so successful in portraying.

This is one of my own images (see fourth image in gallery) from my shoot inspired by Beatriz Ruibal. The focal point of the image is the necklace, which was given to me by my dad and therefore holds a lot of sentimental value to me. Alongside that, the necklace has a charm of a dove on it, which can connote to love or peace, which brings another meaningful element to this image, and can be a reference to how i feel about myself, as it's seen within a mirror, (linking to self identity) or my dad, as its on a necklace given to me by him, so is therefore polysemic. I used the minimal technique that Ruibal uses in her work which i feel successfully creates a sad mood in the image. I did this by only featuring one item that the viewer needs to focus on, instead of multiple, which would have created a more chaotic tone. The mirror was used to create links also to the issue within grief of self identity. A mirror can represent the perception of oneself, and therefore self identity, and the necklace within that, ties it to grief. To me, the use of the mirror shows how I view myself, and more specifically how I view myself in relation to my father's death, for example, my position within my family dynamic and how that affects how I should or shouldn't feel about it. The use of aperture in this image to blur the foreground makes the viewers eye focus automatically on the mirror, which is the effect I was hoping to achieve. This is a technique that I haven't seen in Ruibal’s work, but I think it's effective in what I was trying to achieve, combined with the techniques I took from her work.

This (see fifth image in gallery) is one of the pieces from Ruibal's collection ‘Madre’ the composition (being just the subject placed in the centre) and content of the image itself is so minimalistic and therefore conveys this sense of solemn stillness, which would make sense in the context of the photo. Presumably, this was Ruibal's mother's nail polish, so although it just looks like a simple everyday object, it would hold a lot of meaning to the photographer. This demonstrates how different everyday life becomes when it has been consumed with grief for someone you love, you can be surrounded by normal everyday objects but be constantly reminded of someone simply because of those objects. This is relatable to me and many others who have experienced the same thing, which is another reason that makes Ruibal's series so evocative. The simplicity of the image itself contrasted with the complex symbolism behind it also makes this photo almost satirical, and can represent how even though something looks normal on the surface, there can always be a deeper meaning behind it. This is a direct contrast to Emin's piece ‘My bed’ which displays almost everything in her life so obviously to the viewer, and leaves nothing to the imagination, whereas this is mysterious and simplistic. Nevertheless, they both hold meaning in the way that they both feel about the objects in their work.

To conclude, my project has been inspired hugely by the two artists I have mentioned, and allowed me to explore different areas of human emotion, and how they link to one another. I remain convinced by the argument that grief massively affects self identity, which can be seen in how closely related the works of Tracey Emin and Beatriz Ruibal are, despite being about two different things, grief, and self identity/ growth. Both artists chose to present their environments as representations of their emotions, showing how these emotions are a catalyst for the breakdown of other areas of one's life. In terms of my own work, it has developed to be able to represent both artists successfully, and be able to tie the two together in my experiments of my photos.