My lyrical essay, entitled “The Masks We Wear”, represents someone going through cancer treatment how they processed the experience. While it is possible to just keep going on with life and getting through what’s happening, the anxiety of the experience can last a lifetime.
I chose my image because I wanted to show the subtle way that anxiety can manifest. The woman’s body language makes her appear small and guarded. She does not take up much space in the frame; this emphasises how small anxiety can make someone feel when compared to their surroundings. My interviewee expressed how she did not feel that the weight of the experience really hit her until after finishing treatment. While she continues to separate herself from the experience, some moments can become overwhelming due to the fear that the cancer might reappear. The heavy contrast between the shadows and light blends the woman into the background. The splotches of light give the photo multiple points to look at and make it hard to focus on one object at a time.
Using Adobe Photoshop, I started my editing process by cropping the photo down to shift the focus towards the woman in the front. I made an inverted selection of the woman and applied a black and white filter and vignette. Using the selection around the person, I desaturated the color to lower the contrast between her and the background. I then made a copy of the woman, filled it with black, and transferred it to the diptych. For the lettering, I put each word into a seperate text box, lined each one up, converted the text into an object, and warped each to fit within the silhouette. I chose a simple, bold font to make sure that the image is readable.
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