My lyrical essay passage “you weren‘t supposed to wake up today,” represents what it’s like to have depression and suicidal thoughts/actions. I learned from my interview subject how it felt to be in such hopeless conditions with very little support or outlets.
To represent the emotions my interview subject was feeling I decided to take a picture of a man on a bike. I presume the man was homeless due to the blankets and jackets wrapped on top of his backpack. Many people either stared at the homeless man biking, or ignored his presence. In order to hide himself I presume he hunched over and had his hood on. My interview subject experienced similar emotions. Teachers expressed hypervisibility and seemed to define her for her depression, while students seemed to ignore her condition making her feel invisible. The way my subject in my picture was acting seemed to be experiencing similar emotions. People‘s stares made my subject on the bike feel hypervisible, and people’s ignorance made him feel invisible.
I created a hand tinted effect to my photo using Adobe Photoshop. My subject has a slight color, while the background is black and white. I created a dramatic scene, by creating a vignette around the subject. My subject stands out, because of the contrast between the dark background and his lighter figure. I used a selection around my subject and filled the selection black. I then added my lyrical essay phrase on to him using white text. I converted my text to objects and used Photoshop’s warp tool to give the illusion of text wrapping around the figure.
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