Logos (λόγος)

Established by Viktor E. Frankl, logotherapy is a therapeutic approach aimed at helping people find meaning. I found it an appropriate topic to try and capture through photography from both an internal perspective and looking at wider problems in society.

The photos capture Nathan representing man and Nikolina representing a meaning in life. Nathan’s low-lighted indoor shots represent man’s ability to trap themselves in their minds. This is contrasted with Nikolina’s ethereal representation, with experimentation of long exposure and deliberate blurs, playing into the wider theme she represents. The two converge, ending the narrative on a key tenet of logotherapy: that man’s pursuit is not for pleasure nor avoiding pain, instead a search for meaning. As Nietzsche states: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”.

A contemplation of the wider image can plague a person. Too many become lost in existential frustration. One writer who captured this was Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It drives him to the extent of writing a “logical suicide” in ‘Diary of a Writer’. The (fictional) desperate man derives “I am told, through the intermediary of my consciousness, that I cannot be happy except in harmony with the great all, which I cannot conceive and shall never be in a position to conceive.”. It is a never-ending cycle of absurdness. Camus shines a light through this darkness. He recounts multiple situations there has been an acceptance life is what it is and there is no more we can do e.g. Don Quixote, Adrienne Lecouvreur. His position is summed up perfectly by the quote: “How can one fail to realize that in this vulnerable universe everything that is human and solely human assumes a more vivid meaning”.

I hope to convey the message, through this work, to live life as it comes or it will pass you by. In the eternal words of Frankl: “everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”.

T A I T

ロモグラファー:
roryt8
アップロード日:
2022-02-12
タグ:
400 bnw film moody pentax
カメラ:
Pentax ME Super
フィルム:
Ilford HP5 Plus 400
都市:
Edinburgh
国 / 地域:
United Kingdom
More photos by roryt8